PH flight schools fight for their reputation

Manila: After experiencing a boom 5 years ago, the Philippine flight school industry is struggling to survive, and the fact that a student pilot was on board the recent Masbate crash has not helped.
Nepali citizen Kshitiz Chand was inside the cockpit of the Piper Seneca aircraft owned by the Aviatour charter company and flight school that plunged into sea. The aircraft was supposed to take the late DILG Secretary Jesse Robredo to Naga City from Cebu.
Captain Gomez, 80, was a Philippine Airlines pilot for over 40 years before he set up Omni Aviation in 1993.
Five years ago, his was practically the only flight school that refused to accept scores of Indian students that desperately needed to learn how to fly after most of the experienced pilots and instructors of the country were hired by new airlines such as Fly Emirates or Qatar Airways.
“There was an Indian bandwagon. [Some schools] were offering a $30,000-35,000 package deal for commercial pilot multi-engine license including room and board,” he recalled.
But that’s not enough, he stressed, and pointed out that it should take at least 2 years, or a bare minimum of 18 months if there is good weather.
“They told these Indian kids, the quickest way to get a pilot license is to come to the Philippines and literally buy it. But when the Philippine-trained Indians went back to India, they couldn’t even pass a simulator check, so India blacklisted the Philippines for training and the market dried up.”
Captain Gomez said that the problem with the Philippine aviation sector is not in the flight schools or the airlines but the regulator itself, the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP).
After the US Federal Aviation Administration downgraded the Philippines safety standards to category 2 and the European Union barred Philippine-registered aircraft from entering its airspace, the CAAP has not done much to improve the situation, he claimed.
15/09/12 Carlos Santamaria/Rappler

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