Paul Phelan/ADELAIDE
STUDENT NUMBERS at the Australian Aviation College (AAC) in Adelaide are approaching maximum capacity, but expansion is out of the question, says general manager Harry Bradford. Although the BTR-owned school has over 200 students, it will not expand because quality would suffer, he says.
"With 100 staff, everybody knows everybody else," he says. "You can monitor quality and fix problems; and you can tell when students or staff are not happy. If we turned this place into a sausage factory, where you roll them in one end and out of the other, that vital capability would be lost.
"Now that we are close to capacity, we are able to concentrate on developing the product. To the client, both quality and price are still important, so we're focusing on increasing our value-added 'transition' product range, which actually increases student turnover and sales volume."
The appeal of Australian training to Asian carriers can be put down to geographical proximity, fine-weather statistics, similar time zones, plentiful airspace, sophisticated air-traffic control and English-language training. The AAC's successes with prestige clients further afield, however, supports Bradford's view that some carriers do value quality ahead of cost. It is that market which AAC now seeks to cultivate.
A contract from British Airways, marking the first time that BA has taken its training business outside the UK, is one of the AAC's greatest prizes. Bradford says: "The contract is of enormous strategic importance to us. BA, along with Qantas, Cathay Pacific, South African Airways and others, is among the most credible airlines in the world. Its safety record is exceptional, and its judgement is respected by everyone in aviation. In a very thorough evaluation, it selected us as one of its three suppliers."
Pastoral piloting
Bradford believes that a key element of product quality is the pastoral care of students: "It means treating the individual as a complete person. You won't get effective delivery of instruction in a classroom or in an aeroplane if you are working with a student who's not happy with his life, his personal circumstances, even with the food. You must have a value system in your college which respects, above everything else, the individual student. So pastoral care is as much a training issue as flight or ground instruction."
He adds that "-you must also have a formal system which enables you to check all the time that the mental and physical health of your cadets is sound. It would be easy to forget that, although they already represent considerable investment by the airline, many students are young, sensitive, and vulnerable. There are schools with the attitude that, if a student has problems, it simply means he's not tough enough to handle them and should be rejected.
"That certainly isn't the attitude we take here. It's a considerable money saver for the client airline if people are not dropped out for the wrong reasons. It's now being recognised that the personality and behaviour of a person is as important as their inherent skills. If somebody comes to an airline who is an 'ace', but can't deal with other people, that person is useless to the airline. We actually see ourselves as having a role in ensuring that those people don't get back to the airline."
The demands of that task are highlighted by the multi-cultural nature of the AAC's clientele, which includes Air Niugini, BA, Cathay Pacific, Oman Aviation, Qantas, SAA, Thai International, Vietnam Airlines and Xiamen Airlines. Apart from the licensing authorities of the countries where those airlines are based, the college has also dealt with the civil-aviation authorities of Greece, Indonesia, Korea, Mauritius, Singapore and the Solomon Islands.
Meeting the differing needs of individual carriers, and the even more diverse standards of their licensing authorities, demands a depth of accrued corporate experience, which Bradford is confident places his college ahead of the competition. He believes that the AAC's pro-active product-development strategies will keep it there; as will add-on services such as integrating aspects of cadet recruitment and initial flight screening with other client services.
Bradford also identifies business-management practices vital to the school's success: He says that:
n- he critical competencies which the work demands are continually identified and refined in staff conferences;
- instructional technique is carefully and continually standardised;
- reporting is highly regulated to keep accurate account of individual student progress for clients and college staff;
- resources such as classrooms, aircraft and instructors are closely monitored and allocated, with the aid of a sophisticated computer programme developed in-house;
- close liaison with licensing authorities is maintained, to monitor the college's compliance with their requirements;
- dealings with client airlines are conducted on a "partnership" basis, to maximise alignment with client needs;
- human-factors training is embedded in all aspects of instruction, and the management of standards "-is held paramount".
To make the most of benefits from their training investments, says Bradford, airlines need to provide strong feedback to the training school, based on progress reports and cadets' post-training performance. Not all of them do so. Airlines are under pressure to manage their crewing in the context of their fleet plan.
This, according to Bradford, sometimes makes it difficult to get access to the feedback needed to validate training methods. It also makes it harder to improve the course content, and to focus training towards a particular airline and a particular licensing authority.
Productive maintenance
The AAC maintains a modern fleet, with uncompromising maintenance standards. Bradford says: "We have a very strong ethic in the hangar that aeroplanes have to be properly maintained. Our engineers are valued as highly productive staff members. Despite very high utilisation across the fleet, we are achieving 0.5 maintenance man hours per flying hour and we haven't had a maintenance-related incident. I have looked at other ratios, both for instructional and maintenance productivity, and we're certainly among the most productive in the industry." The maximum class size is 16; the minimum size is one. Students from different airlines are usually trained separately, says business-development manager David Robson.
Sometimes, however, with the agreement of the airlines, the school looks for options to blend two or more courses, because "...we don't just have the single task of technical training by applying ground theory. The other half is behaviour development, and making sure the people are suitable. Often, that aim is supported by putting two cultures together."
Australian prices are slightly higher than some schools in the USA because of fuel, capital-equipment and spares costs. On the other hand, maintaining a stable instructor-group is less of a problem in Australia than elsewhere. The AAC maintains a careful blend of senior and junior instructors, and both have important roles, Bradford believes. He is critical of the US schools, many of whom, he says, have a "hire-and-fire" policy which militates against the accumulation of important skills and insights.
Bradford says: "We have a mixed hiring policy. We hire mature people who have the skills: experienced airline pilots who have something to give back to the industry. There are a number around who have a lot of airline-check and training experience, who understand fully what the ultimate aim of the training is, but who remain enthusiasts and want to continue their aviation career. We also hire young, enthusiastic, people of the kind any school must have coming through the organisation, to give it momentum. We fully expect some of them to move on into the airlines."
In one recent flurry of airline recruitment, when about half of its instructors were of airline-entry age, the AAC lost almost all its younger instructors. In response, the school has developed its human-resources policy to insulate itself from airline employment cycles and to maintain a reasonable mix of people. "I don't think we'll ever see a situation again where we'll lose so many staff; but we might well lose 20%, which is manageable," says Bradford.
Low-cost simulation
The school continually monitors new developments in simulation and computer-aided training. Robson believes that recent simulation advances will vastly enhance the scope and value of services which schools can offer: "Atlantis and other manufacturers are not confusing the market, but clarifying it. They're starting to produce very-high-value flight-training devices that organisations like ours can afford, and which do probably 90% of the work of a full flight simulator - which we couldn't afford," he says.
About 40% of AAC clients require type ratings, which the college normally contracts to Airbus Industrie, ATR and Qantas (and others) as a complete package: "We do all the liaison and management, so that it's seamless for our clients. This also gives us an in-depth exposure to the airlines' training systems, which is valuable to us and which we plough back into our product," Robson explains.
He continues: "We use the airlines' resources for the type training, although we often do preparation here. If a student's language-training level might unfairly burden an airline training organisation, we do pre-course training, using our specialist language instructors. We try to do it in an integrated way, to manage the language problem in the context of the training that's been given. Where we can't, the student will come out of the programme and may even stop altogether until we get them to an English-language competence that enables them to proceed with the course."
As with all the AAC's activities, it is the quality of the end product which matters - and it seems to be working.
Source: Flight International
