Paul Lewis/Beijing
Chinese civil-aviation has been transformed since the country began to open up in the early 1980s. China's monolithic state carrier and its antiquated Soviet hardware have gone, replaced by a proliferation of international, regional and provincial airlines, operating the latest in Western designs. More recently, there has been a quieter and less-visible software revolution in the cockpit.
Over the past four years, pilot training in China has undergone an extensive overhaul and a fourfold expansion in an effort to bring the country's flying schools and technical institutes in line with the demands of a modern airline industry. The qualitative and quantitative refinements coming to the fore result from a major injection of money and effort by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).
The single most valuable return on this investment has been a turnaround in China's once-abysmal safety record. The country has suffered only one accident and 35 deaths in the three years since CAAC vice-minister Shen Yuankang announced a safety crackdown in July 1994. In the two years before that, seven crashes killed more than 500 people.
Keeping up with traffic
Chinese civil aviation is not completely in the clear yet, however. To keep pace with projected traffic growth, China will have to enlarge its pool of qualified pilots to more than 10,000 within the next five years. The recent purchase of 60 Airbus A320/A321s and the delivery of 40 new Boeing MD-90 TrunkLiners will generate a need for 800 more pilots, while five newly ordered Boeing 777s and six more Airbus A340s will require almost 90 extra two-person crews.
Major progress has been made, but tough challenges still lie ahead, particularly in finding the required numbers of experienced pilots with enough hours under their belts to take left-hand seats. For many Western aircraft manufacturers eager to cash in on China's rapid expansion, this is providing new openings to help.
For the CAAC-administered Civil Aviation Flight College (CAFC), this has meant a return to basics and a revamp of its teaching staff, syllabus and equipment. For more than 40 years, the school has virtually been China's sole supplier of trained civil aircrew. Today it boasts that more than 7,000 of its graduates make up 90% of the total of commercial pilots in China. The remaining 10% are drawn from the retired ranks of the air force.
By the early 1990s, accelerated airline-industry growth of more than 30% a year had outstripped the CAFC's capacity to provide new pilots. The college was producing only about 150 graduates a year, when demand was for almost four times that number. This has resulted in a multi-billion-yuan crash programme in CAAC funding for education since1991.
"The big investment included the purchase of new Socata TB20 Trinidad and TB200 Tobago XL ab initio trainers from France," says Wang Cunhao, CAAC director-general of science, technology and education. "At the same time, we've had to import advanced aircraft simulators, ab initio fixed-base trainers and set up new training schools."
A first batch of 28 single-engined TB20s was purchased in 1988-9, followed by five more TB20s and 38 TB200XLs in 1994. Six electronic-flight-instrument-equipped Piper Cheyenne IIIAs were also acquired for advanced pilot training. "This represented a great change from training on a single type of aircraft, the Shijiazhuang Y-5 [locally built Antonov An-2], to operating dual ab initio and advanced trainers," says Wang.
The CAFC has invested 300 million yuan ($36.3 million) in a new simulator training centre at its Guanghan headquarters, near Chengdu. The site has three CAE Cheyenne IIIA full-flight simulators and two fixed-base trainers (FBTs), along with six French-supplied Trinidad FBTs and eight Chinese-built fixed-training devices.
A fourth CAFC branch school was opened in 1993 at Luoyang, in Henan province, to conduct both ab initio and advanced flight training. Climatically, it is better suited to all-year flying than are Guanghan and its three neighbouring satellite ab initio airfields at Mianyang, Suining and Xinjin, in China's south-west tropical province of Sichuan.
CURRICULUM CHANGES
Material improvements have been accompanied by a complete rewrite of the CAFC's syllabus. Ab initio training on the TB20/200XL has been lengthened from 160h to 200h, while pre-solo flying has been cut from 100 to an average of just 20h. Flying time on the Cheyenne has also been extended, from 20h to 40h to improve high-speed, multi-engined and electronic flight-instrumentation system (EFIS) training, before students move on to jet-aircraft.
The CAAC, however, still lacks sufficient resources to train domestically sufficient new pilots each year to keep up with demand. To make up the shortfall, it has resorted to sending many third-year students overseas for basic flight training. Recipient nations have included Australia, France, New Zealand, the UK and the USA.
"We enrol between 600 and 650 students every year, but in fact can only flight-train around 400," says Wang. "Each year, we have to send 100 of these students to foreign flying colleges, while a further 100-150 China Southern Airline students are sent to their own school in Western Australia."
China Southern, by virtue of its size and autonomy, has been allowed to take a 65% share in the West Australian Flying College at Jandakot, near Perth. In return for a $2.9 million outlay, the Guangzhou-based carrier has secured its own independent supply of pilots. Its students, rather than attending classes in Guanghan, are enrolled at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics for their first two years of theory study.
There appears to be little sign of Beijing permitting other large Chinese airlines to follow China Southern's independent course. The CAFC has instead widened the use of overseas colleges to include training of its own instructors. Under a Boeing-sponsored scheme, 18 Chinese instructors are sent to the Florida Technology Institute each year for two months of cross-country flight training. A further dozen were posted to France in 1996 on a staff exchange.
In October, the CAFC will dispatch four ab initio and four advanced flying instructors, together with 30 students, to Australia's Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Under the A$1.5 million ($1.08 million) deal signed in August, the Chinese instructors will each spend four months at Point Cook, Victoria, participating in the training of their own students.
LANGUAGE LIMITATIONS
The CAAC's continuing efforts to raise training and safety standards have not been confined to the entry level, but have extended to on-the-job initiatives aimed at China's community of 7,000 qualified pilots. One of the more ambitious initiatives has been the compilation of an interactive computer-based self-study course to improve English-language skills.
The CAAC continues to use English-speaking radio operators on international flights, but stopped training new ones more than ten years ago, and numbers are now diminishing. Newly introduced regulations now require all pilots to study for and pass the CAAC's new Radio Telephony English course. A CD-ROM has been produced so that pilots can practise and test their comprehension of English air-traffic-control directives and reporting procedures, as well as recorded cockpit advisories and warnings.
"We're going to send out the CD-ROM and text books in October and, between the end of this year and early 1998, we're going to test all the pilots on the computers," says CAAC flight-standards liaison deputy director Ma Tao. Pilots who fail to make the grade will be prevented from moving on to larger aircraft and flying on international routes.
The number of pilots in China has roughly doubled in the past ten years and, with another 3,000 expected to graduate from the CAFC in the next five years, there is a pressing need for more flight simulators. Only four of China's 35 carriers now own and operate simulators, including China Southern and China Southwest Airlines.
Air China recently announced an order for two new CAE Boeing 777-200 and 737 systems for its Beijing centre. China Eastern Airlines plans to commission its new Thomson Training & Simulation (TTS) Airbus A300-600R simulator in December. The Shanghai-based carrier has built a training centre at Pudong to accommodate the system, along with an ex-McDonnell Douglas (MDC) CAE MD-82 simulator.
The need for additional simulators to support China's smaller regional and provincial carriers has opened opportunities for Airbus and Boeing. Their motives are clear. "We're looking for leverage and to say 'look what we've done for you'," says Boeing executive vice-president and former MDC China president John Fugh. "This is all done for one purpose - to sell aircraft: that's the bottom line."
Recent Boeing initiatives have included the donation of a company 737-300 simulator to Guanghan, along with the services of a team of instructor pilots and technicians, for 12 months. The simulator has been used to train a mix of CAAC inspectors and airline check captains in an effort to standardise cockpit procedures. By October 1996, more than 120 key personnel from ten airlines had completed the course.
"Our focus has been on training the trainer," says Boeing customer-service vice-president Tim Premselaar. "It wasn't a case of them not knowing how to ßy, rather that they came from different sources and used different procedures. Some were ex-air force, some were trained in Australia, and others came from their own airlines. Thinking in the left-hand seat differed from that in the right-hand seat, and you didn't have good cockpit-resource management."
Boeing's longer-term commitment to training in China rests with its new partner, FlightSafety International (FSI), and a new $40 million simulator centre under construction in Yunnan province. The Kunming FlightSafety Aviation Training joint venture, in which FSI owns 70%, Yunnan Tobacco 25% and Asia Link 5%, is to open for business at the start of 1998.
The 18,000m2 (194,0002) centre includes two high bays, each large enough to accommodate three simulators, computer-based-training classrooms, cabin evacuation and door trainers, and a 120-room hotel. "In China, it's not enough just to provide training, you have to provide everything - food, housing, transport - and we've allowed for that," says FSI Asia vice-president John Marino.
Three simulators are being installed: two FSI Boeing 757/767 and 737-300 EFIS level-D systems and a reconditioned ex-Swissair MD-82 level-C system belonging to China Northern Airlines. It was originally given to China Northern by MDC and was to form the basis of a joint-venture simulator centre in Dalian, Liaoning province. The plan failed to get off the ground, however, because of a lack of capital.
All three simulators will be marketed to Chinese and regional airlines on a wet- or dry-lease basis for recurrent and transition training and, in the case of the MD-82 system, the proceeds will be divided with China Northern. Acquisition of a fourth simulator is planned, with an MD-90 system a strong contender. "Our new partnership with Boeing will weigh heavily in that decision," says Marino.
Airbus has opted for a more direct investment - a new ten-year joint venture with the CAAC's China Aviation Supplies. The $170 million Aviation Training and Support Centre, north of Beijing, is due to open to students at the end of October. The 8,000m2 training annex is fitted with a TTS A320 level-C simulator, a cabin-evacuation trainer and ten classrooms, including four with computer-based training. A second TTS A340 simulator will come on-line in February 1998.
"We have taken a different approach from that of Boeing," says Airbus China customer-services vice-president Francois Mourareau. "Boeing's been in China a long time and we wanted to have a better market share, so we've had to demonstrate that we are able to operate and support aircraft in China without problems," he adds.
AIRBUS model
The centre is modelled on Airbus' two schools in Toulouse and Miami, where mainland Chinese students now account for 30% of the workload. It will be staffed by a mix of Airbus and seconded airline instructors. Simulator time is fully booked for the first year, with 3,500h and 3,100h set aside respectively for A340 and A320 recurrent training, and 25 A320 and eight A340 crews due for transition training.
"Recurrent training is very important, even more so than transition training," says Airbus training manager Christian Stie. "We will have a specific software program just to follow up trainee by trainee. It's by this means that we can trace people and see how much progress they are making."
Source: Flight International
