Pub: Sydney Morning Herald
Pubdate: Wednesday 20th of February 2008
Edition: First
Copyright: Section: My Career
Subsection:
Page: 2
Wordcount: 724
The cost of starting a career as a pilot just came down, writes Justin Wastnage.
They're seen as having one of the most glamorous professions on the planet.
Commercial airline pilots spend their days among the clouds, often jetting from one exotic international destination to the next. They enjoy the admiration and respect of the community and can earn up to $350,000 a year.
And yet there is a shortage of applicants for pilot positions. Ian Woods, president of the Australian and International Pilots Association, says he is surprised aspiring pilots are not "crushed in the rush" for jobs with airlines. There are only 350,000 pilots worldwide, a tiny number compared with other occupations with the same earning potential.
Part of the problem is the cost involved in becoming a pilot. To earn their wings, aspiring aviators until recently have had to pay their own way through flight school, starting in light aircraft before graduating to twin-engined aircraft with sophisticated cockpit instruments. Would-be pilots have been forced to save or take out loans to pay the $60,000 needed to get an Australian commercial pilot's licence.
But there is now another way as airlines around the world rethink pilot training.
In Australia, Regional Express Airlines (Rex), facing a severe shortage of pilots, last year announced it would provide sponsored cadetships for raw recruits. "Rex recognises that the high cost of flying training is a major obstacle to many young people who desire to make a career in the sky," Rex chief of staff Jim Davis said at the launch of the program.
Rex spokeswoman Danielle Ross says the regional airline, which will pay for either half or all the training costs, depending on merit, had more than 1000 applications for the first intake of 20 places. Those selected were "the brightest academically". The first batch began training on December 10.
Of the 40 candidates the airline expects to take each year, 20 will be considered for a fully sponsored scholarship program that could see them paying nothing towards the $160,000 training program in return for a guarantee of six years' service. A further 20 will pay half the training costs via a low-interest loan and must stay with Rex for five years.
The program, a joint venture between Rex and Mangalore airport in Victoria, is in many ways a return to the past. Before the 1990s, many big airlines accepted recruits who paid for their tuition through flight. But privatisation made the airline industry more cutthroat and shareholders demanded an end to paid-for training schemes. By 2000, the only paid-for training option was a 10-year stint in the Royal Australian Air Force before shifting to commercial flying.
Woods says the crew shortage is getting more acute as air transport grows and airlines compete with each other to find pilots. The emergence of low-cost carriers is exacerbating the problem. Aircraft manufacturer Boeing estimates a further 10,000 pilots will be needed globally during the next 10 years to meet demand.
However, the Rex scheme is still far from the norm. Some regional airlines, such as Queensland's MacAir, are able to capitalise on their location to capture staff. "It's a lifestyle choice," says MacAir managing director Kevin Gill.
Most pilots are motivated by a love of flying. Virgin Blue pilot Rob Hoey first caught the aviation bug growing up in remote Papua New Guinea, where his parents were missionaries and flying was an essential mode of transport.
Hoey became a mechanic but he and his wife poured their salaries into his flying lessons for two years. When he qualified, he worked for NG Air, an Aboriginal-owned air service based in Alice Springs. After a stint in Papua New Guinea flying for Mission Aviation Fellowship, he returned to Australia, where he worked for several airlines before ending up at Virgin Blue in 2003. He worked his way up from Cessna light aircraft to 19-seat turboprops and large Boeing 767 jets, until finally transferring to the 76-seater Embraer jets on the Canberra to Sydney route.
For others wanting to be pilots, the gold standard is still the Qantas cadet pilot program. The airline has partnerships with Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne and Brisbane's Griffith University.
Showing posts with label pilots. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pilots. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
7.30 Report - Pilot safety
Justin Wastnage interviewed as part of Australian Broadcasting Corporation's 7.30 Report current affairs program.
The recent fatal plane crash in Phuket has raised new concerns about air safety and pilot training. Australia is considering a new licensing system for co-pilots which puts more emphasis on flight simulators over actual flying time. But critics warn this training is inadequate.
Mark Willacy reports on this controversial scheme.
MARK WILLACY: By any standard, 2007 has been a horror year for commercial air safety. It started on New Years Day, with the crash of an Indonesian 737 which killed everyone on board. Two months later in Yogyakarta, another Indonesian airliner exploded after careering off the end of a runway. 22 people, including five Australian, died. Earlier this month, 89 people were killed when a Thai plane crashed in bad weather on the resort island of Phuket. Hundreds more have died this year in accidents in South America and Africa.
PETER GIBSON, CIVIL AVIATION SAFETY AUTHORITY: One of the factors that's behind 80 or 90 per cent of accidents are mistakes by people on the flight deck. Now if we can train our crews from Day One in their pilot training to look for those errors that they're making, to look for the mistakes they can make, to look for the threats to safety and to identify those accurately and take actions to avoid them, then we can avoid accidents.
PILOT TRAINER: Alpha Echo Alpha, you're cleared for take-off, runway left. We note that there are thunderstorms in the area.
MARK WILLACY: This is how the Civil Aviation Safety Authority hopes the pilots of the future will be trained to avoid accidents. In Brisbane, the Airline Academy of Australia in conjunction with Boeing is trialling a new training regime involving one of the most advanced flight simulators in the world. If the new regime is implemented in line with International Civil Aviation Organisation guidelines, trainees could qualify for a commercial copilot's licence after just 10 hours solo flying in an actual plane.
JUSTIN WASTNAGE, NEWS EDITOR, 'TRAVEL WEEKLY': ICAO has introduced this new class of licence called a multi-crew pilot's licence, which really is a speeded-up version of the commercial pilot's licence, essentially spitting out some copilots rather than fully-trained captains with a lot of work done in simulators rather than flying small aircraft.
MARK WILLACY: This sounds like a great plan to turn out a lot of pilots rapidly, but there are some who are concerned it may compromise safety.
PETER SOMERVILLE, AUSTRALIAN & INTERNATIONAL PILOTS ASSOCIATION: There is a question mark over it, in our view. There is no, so far as we're aware, scientific basis for it or to prove that it will work as well as the current licensing arrangements. And clearly in Australia we've got one of the safest commercial aviation environments and in those circumstances we as airline pilots will stand up to make sure we keep those safe standards.
STEWART CAMERON, AIRLINE ACADEMY OF AUSTRALIA: This is a Diamond 40 which we're using for multi-crew pilot program.
MARK WILLACY: This is the man running the trial which could lead to Australia adopting the multi-crew pilots licence or MPL. A former RAAF commander, Stewart Cameron is the CEO of the Airline Academy of Australia and a keen advocate of changing the licensing system.
STEWART CAMERON: This is the first time in nearly 50 years we've actually looked at a way of changing the training. It's competency based, you know, again I come back again to the issue of safety. No one in this industry is going to do anything that's going to put the travelling public in jeopardy.
TRAINEE PILOT: Note that the weather is raining.
MARK WILLACY: The academy simulator can certainly test would-be pilots by replicating some of the most challenging flying conditions. Here the pilots are doing battle with blinding rain and severe cross winds but old hands warn that nothing beats the real thing.
PETER SOMERVILLE: There's something to be said for a young pilot flying solo, getting an idea of the dangers and how dangerous the activity of flying an aircraft can be. But it may be that the MPL program doesn't give people that level of training.
PETER GIBSON: Simulators today are incredibly sophisticated. You can do things in them that you simply can't do in an aircraft. You can pretend you've got an engine failure in a 737 by shutting down the engine and making the pilots go through that drill. You can't do that in a real aircraft.
MARK WILLACY: Last year the Federal Opposition was so concerned it called for a Senate inquiry into the multi-crew pilots licensing, pointing out that the September 11 hijackers had more flying hours than the 10 required under the proposed system. But the civil aviation watchdog argues that under the current system many would-be commercial pilots spend too much time flying irrelevant, single-engine aircraft.
PETER GIBSON: It's a mix of flying in aircraft. You've still got to do your basic flying training, but then you'll move more quickly into simulator where you can learn to fly in the environment that you're going to be operating in, in other words in 737s, 747s and most importantly, with two pilots, learn to work as a crew.
MARK WILLACY: At the Airline Academy of Australia, the CEO Stewart Cameron, says the trial of multi-crew pilot licensing is more stringent than the one suggested by international authorities, meaning the pilots who graduate there will have 100 hours more training than the guidelines recommended.
STEWART CAMERON: In fact, the students here will be doing about 140 hours - a mixture of flying and high-fidelity simulation. The licence is issued at the end of 12 take off and landings, in this case in a 737.
MARK WILLACY: With the economies of China and India booming, and more people flying than ever before, there's a huge shortage of pilots, meaning the pressure is on to train more.
STEWART CAMERON: If we look at what the national civil aviation organisation is telling us, for the next 18 years or thereabouts we're looking at a deficit of about 80,000 odd pilots.
MARK WILLACY: Richard Chen from Taiwan hopes to graduate from the Airline Academy of Australia in six months and then head home to fulfil his passion for flying while also landing a lucrative job.
RICHARD CHEN, TRAINEE PILOT: Aviation is cool. In Australia is the best in the world, the whole world. The instructor here, they are amazing. They have a lot of knowledge to teach us.
MARK WILLACY: The trial of the multi-crew pilots licensing system will wrap up next year, then CASA will invite the community to comment on it. After that, the decision will be made whether or not to implement it.
PETER GIBSON: We'll make sure that the standards, if this goes ahead, require the pilots to reach a level of skills, knowledge and competencies that mean they will be able to fly whatever aircraft they're qualified to do in exactly the same way as pilots can today. Really the standards may end up being higher than they are today.
PETER SOMERVILLE: At the present time this new, synthetic training is not proven and it needs to be done carefully and cautiously. And at the present time Australia is leading the world in the introduction of this licence. That's why we're concerned. We simply don't want the first multi-crew pilot licence arrangement, we want the best.
KERRY O'BRIEN: Mark Willacy with that report.
The recent fatal plane crash in Phuket has raised new concerns about air safety and pilot training. Australia is considering a new licensing system for co-pilots which puts more emphasis on flight simulators over actual flying time. But critics warn this training is inadequate.
Transcript
KERRY O'BRIEN: Fatal plane crashes in Indonesia and Thailand this year with more than a hundred deaths, while still being investigated, have both put the issue of pilot competency in the spotlight. In Australia, there are warnings that our own commercial air safety could be compromised by a proposed new licensing system for co-pilots. Australia's air safety watchdog is overseeing a trial of a new system in Brisbane, which involves a greater emphasis on flight simulators over actual air time. Its supporters say it gives budding pilots a better idea of extreme conditions behind the controls. Others claim it means trainees with just 10 hours actual flying time could receive what's called a multi-crew pilot's licence.Mark Willacy reports on this controversial scheme.
MARK WILLACY: By any standard, 2007 has been a horror year for commercial air safety. It started on New Years Day, with the crash of an Indonesian 737 which killed everyone on board. Two months later in Yogyakarta, another Indonesian airliner exploded after careering off the end of a runway. 22 people, including five Australian, died. Earlier this month, 89 people were killed when a Thai plane crashed in bad weather on the resort island of Phuket. Hundreds more have died this year in accidents in South America and Africa.
PETER GIBSON, CIVIL AVIATION SAFETY AUTHORITY: One of the factors that's behind 80 or 90 per cent of accidents are mistakes by people on the flight deck. Now if we can train our crews from Day One in their pilot training to look for those errors that they're making, to look for the mistakes they can make, to look for the threats to safety and to identify those accurately and take actions to avoid them, then we can avoid accidents.
PILOT TRAINER: Alpha Echo Alpha, you're cleared for take-off, runway left. We note that there are thunderstorms in the area.
MARK WILLACY: This is how the Civil Aviation Safety Authority hopes the pilots of the future will be trained to avoid accidents. In Brisbane, the Airline Academy of Australia in conjunction with Boeing is trialling a new training regime involving one of the most advanced flight simulators in the world. If the new regime is implemented in line with International Civil Aviation Organisation guidelines, trainees could qualify for a commercial copilot's licence after just 10 hours solo flying in an actual plane.
JUSTIN WASTNAGE, NEWS EDITOR, 'TRAVEL WEEKLY': ICAO has introduced this new class of licence called a multi-crew pilot's licence, which really is a speeded-up version of the commercial pilot's licence, essentially spitting out some copilots rather than fully-trained captains with a lot of work done in simulators rather than flying small aircraft.
MARK WILLACY: This sounds like a great plan to turn out a lot of pilots rapidly, but there are some who are concerned it may compromise safety.
PETER SOMERVILLE, AUSTRALIAN & INTERNATIONAL PILOTS ASSOCIATION: There is a question mark over it, in our view. There is no, so far as we're aware, scientific basis for it or to prove that it will work as well as the current licensing arrangements. And clearly in Australia we've got one of the safest commercial aviation environments and in those circumstances we as airline pilots will stand up to make sure we keep those safe standards.
STEWART CAMERON, AIRLINE ACADEMY OF AUSTRALIA: This is a Diamond 40 which we're using for multi-crew pilot program.
MARK WILLACY: This is the man running the trial which could lead to Australia adopting the multi-crew pilots licence or MPL. A former RAAF commander, Stewart Cameron is the CEO of the Airline Academy of Australia and a keen advocate of changing the licensing system.
STEWART CAMERON: This is the first time in nearly 50 years we've actually looked at a way of changing the training. It's competency based, you know, again I come back again to the issue of safety. No one in this industry is going to do anything that's going to put the travelling public in jeopardy.
TRAINEE PILOT: Note that the weather is raining.
MARK WILLACY: The academy simulator can certainly test would-be pilots by replicating some of the most challenging flying conditions. Here the pilots are doing battle with blinding rain and severe cross winds but old hands warn that nothing beats the real thing.
PETER SOMERVILLE: There's something to be said for a young pilot flying solo, getting an idea of the dangers and how dangerous the activity of flying an aircraft can be. But it may be that the MPL program doesn't give people that level of training.
PETER GIBSON: Simulators today are incredibly sophisticated. You can do things in them that you simply can't do in an aircraft. You can pretend you've got an engine failure in a 737 by shutting down the engine and making the pilots go through that drill. You can't do that in a real aircraft.
MARK WILLACY: Last year the Federal Opposition was so concerned it called for a Senate inquiry into the multi-crew pilots licensing, pointing out that the September 11 hijackers had more flying hours than the 10 required under the proposed system. But the civil aviation watchdog argues that under the current system many would-be commercial pilots spend too much time flying irrelevant, single-engine aircraft.
PETER GIBSON: It's a mix of flying in aircraft. You've still got to do your basic flying training, but then you'll move more quickly into simulator where you can learn to fly in the environment that you're going to be operating in, in other words in 737s, 747s and most importantly, with two pilots, learn to work as a crew.
MARK WILLACY: At the Airline Academy of Australia, the CEO Stewart Cameron, says the trial of multi-crew pilot licensing is more stringent than the one suggested by international authorities, meaning the pilots who graduate there will have 100 hours more training than the guidelines recommended.
STEWART CAMERON: In fact, the students here will be doing about 140 hours - a mixture of flying and high-fidelity simulation. The licence is issued at the end of 12 take off and landings, in this case in a 737.
MARK WILLACY: With the economies of China and India booming, and more people flying than ever before, there's a huge shortage of pilots, meaning the pressure is on to train more.
STEWART CAMERON: If we look at what the national civil aviation organisation is telling us, for the next 18 years or thereabouts we're looking at a deficit of about 80,000 odd pilots.
MARK WILLACY: Richard Chen from Taiwan hopes to graduate from the Airline Academy of Australia in six months and then head home to fulfil his passion for flying while also landing a lucrative job.
RICHARD CHEN, TRAINEE PILOT: Aviation is cool. In Australia is the best in the world, the whole world. The instructor here, they are amazing. They have a lot of knowledge to teach us.
MARK WILLACY: The trial of the multi-crew pilots licensing system will wrap up next year, then CASA will invite the community to comment on it. After that, the decision will be made whether or not to implement it.
PETER GIBSON: We'll make sure that the standards, if this goes ahead, require the pilots to reach a level of skills, knowledge and competencies that mean they will be able to fly whatever aircraft they're qualified to do in exactly the same way as pilots can today. Really the standards may end up being higher than they are today.
PETER SOMERVILLE: At the present time this new, synthetic training is not proven and it needs to be done carefully and cautiously. And at the present time Australia is leading the world in the introduction of this licence. That's why we're concerned. We simply don't want the first multi-crew pilot licence arrangement, we want the best.
KERRY O'BRIEN: Mark Willacy with that report.
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