Gold Coast-based Australian Wings Academy is set to significantly expand its training capability with the approval of a new facility to be located at Glen Innes in northern NSW.
“We have been granted development approval for a 600-student residential airline pilot and aviation training academy at Glen Innes in North Western NSW designed for up to 400 flying trainees and 200 other students completing aviation related courses, which will be built in four stages over five years” said managing director Phil Sweeney.
The academy will also train aviation engineers and other licensed aviation personnel.
The precinct will be a closed campus with all essential student facilities such as accommodation, dining, sports and leisure contained on-site; and the academy will also house all essential flight training infrastructure, including state of the art flight simulators, teaching classrooms, flight briefing rooms, flight planning, administration and aircraft maintenance facilities and in-house refuelling facilities.
Tertiary level qualifications to enhance the pilot skills acquired through a vocational training program will be provided in collaboration with a university, likely to be the University of New England, with whom talks are underway.
“This will expand the career opportunities available to graduating students and meet the demand of an increasing number of carriers who require their pilots to be Degree qualified” said Sweeney.
Since AWA sees the demand for pilots primarily from countries where English is not the first language extensive English proficiency training will be offered have all graduating students leave the academy with English qualifications that meet ICAO standards.
Glen Innes was selected after a seven-year search for a location that could meet the demanding criteria that a state-of-the-art academy requires.
“Glen Innes’ excellent weather allows for over 350 days of uninterrupted flying a year off a sealed, lit runway of 1498m and a 1678m cross runway,” said AWA director Kingsley Mundey.
He went on to say that “the airport is located close to controlled airspace to allow instrument training yet its own training area is within unrestricted airspace up to 10,000ft”.
The main educational qualifications will consist of a vocational Cert IV and Diploma in Aviation accompanied by Civil Aviation Safety Authority of Australia issued Commercial Pilots Licence (CPL) and Airline Transport Pilots Licence (ATPL).
These will be issued by AWA which is a Registered Training Organisation (RTO) with full CRICOS approval.
Other aviation courses also to be offered include aircraft maintenance, aircraft dispatch, crew resource management and airline operations.
AWA expects the academy to receive its first intake of students in early to mid-2014.