Grow your own

The cutting-edge facility, opened during the 2017 Dubai Air Show, is already at its present capacity of 253 students, of 30,000 worldwide applicants. “It was a bit of a surprise to us but it was easy to start with our own (UAE) students first,” Al Hammadi tells the World of Aviation. EFTA’s first intake of 17 recruits will join the Emirates jet fleet after graduating in March.

But Captain Abdulla, as his charges call him, a former Emirates B777 pilot, is already planning ahead to when the facility will cater for 600 aspiring pilots from around the world.

Emirati trainees are sponsored into EFTA by Emirates, but international candidates are enrolled either courtesy of a sponsoring airline or self-fund their studies with no guaranteed job after graduating.

Training isn’t cheap for non-Emiratis and non-sponsored trainees, with fees ranging from US$200-250,000 but everything is included, right down to uniforms.

At a minimum, students complete at least 1,100 hours of ground training, 130 hours of simulator flying and 185 hours of aircraft flying. An Emirates first officer requires a minimum of 2,000 hours.

The standard Airline Transport Pilot’s Licence course takes 21 months, but with foundation courses it can extend to 43 months. Al Hammadi says the drop-out rate is around three per cent since the doors opened.

On the ground, each of the 36 classrooms, spread over four floors of the academy, have large, split touchscreens where every aspect of flying taught by the instructors is synchronised with students’ tablets in paperless rooms, creating an interactive training environment. They use bespoke, integrated software encompassing the newest flight training techniques and a progressive curriculum created in a partnership between EFTA and Boeing.

Virtual reality headsets also let trainees experience the cockpit in the classroom while students watch their actions on the touchscreen.

EFTA also bought six mini-motion flight simulators for the students, the first of their kind in the aviation industry.

The ground school is integrated into a fully operational private airport at Jebel Ali, near the lightly used Dubai World Central (Al Maktoum) airport, with a 1.8km runway with modern navigational aids and lighting, an independent air traffic control tower, rescue and firefighting services, a maintenance centre, BP technology to prevent misfuelling, and in a hangar with the shiniest floor a brand new fleet is housed for student use.

The academy has 22 Cirrus SR22 G6 single-engine piston aircraft with built-in ballistic parachute recovery systems — a safeguard for trainee pilots because of the aircraft’s ability to deploy the chute and glide the plane without power at certain speeds. It also operates five Embraer Phenom 100EV light jets, and was a launch customer for this aircraft, with its cruise speed of over 400kts.

Trainees start flying the Cirrus aircraft before progressing to the Phenoms, which have the industry’s first touchscreen glass flight deck for light turbine aircraft and a cockpit that prioritises human factors.

The aircraft also have airline-grade computer systems that prepare students for flight operations when they become commercial airline pilots.

“It’s an ideal entry-level aircraft for jet pilot training and gives students a head start on multi-engine commercial airlines,” Al Hammadi says.

By the end of last year 67 students had reached the flying phase of their training. When pilot Mohammed Al Dosari made the academy’s first solo flight in one of the Cirrus aircraft last July, much fanfare was made about the milestone.

The academy encourages female applicants, with nine in the present Emirati intake. Latifia Al Mansoori, the first female cadet, flew solo in September. International students, however, are currently less numerous: there are presently two students from Australia and one each from the United Kingdom, Egypt, Italy, Bahrain and the United States.

Denise McNabb travelled to Dubai as a guest of Emirates