Shandong Airlines has opened an ab initio flight-training school in north-east China, in a bid to resolve the country’s growing shortage of pilots.
Run in partnership with US training college Spartan School of Aeronautics, the Qingdao Jiutian Spartan Flight Academy expects to begin flight training in January 2006.
Having started ground training last month, the academy will train 200 to 300 pilots annually and plans to acquire a fleet of 20 Cesna 172s for training.
Twenty-eight initial students are undergoing ground training and will begin flight instruction in January – a second group of 50 will begin in April. Qingdao Jiutian then plans to enrol 50 more students every three months.
The aircraft will be used for the private pilot licence and instrument training parts of the course.
Spartan, based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is training 180 Chinese students for 11 Chinese carriers, but is unable to accept more in the numbers required by expanding Chinese airlines.
Some parts of pilot training, such as the twin-engine and commercial pilot licence elements, will initially still need to be carried out in the USA, but the aim is to expand the Chinese school to offer full training.
The academy is part-owned by Spartan, Shangdong and private Chinese company Sunny Forest. Chinese airlines face a pilot shortage and, although it will be more expensive to train pilots in China than the USA, airlines see advantages in training pilots closer to home, says Spartan.
Source: Flight International
