CTC Aviation in New Zealand has made a successful venture into the Japanese market, training pilots for a Tokyo university.
The success of the program was highlighted this week with a visit to CTC's Hamilton base by representatives from JF Oberlin University: President Mitani, Simon Cookson and Takaharu Ishihara
CTC Aviation Training (NZ) Limited Acting Managing Director, Julian So, said the success of the CTC partnership with JF Oberlin University, launched in 2010, is a reflection of the high global regard for the company’s airline pilot training programmes.
“A key factor in the international success of our CTC Wings programme is the high employment record of our graduate pilots. It is not enough to simply train pilots to licence issue – CTC Aviation goes above and beyond to secure career opportunities for every one of our graduates,” he explained.
The strength of the program is reflected in comments made by Simon Cookson.
“The results from this bespoke CTC Wings programme have been tremendous," he said. "Of our first group of 12 students who trained at CTC Aviation, 100% secured jobs before university graduation.
"The second group of 13 students is now in the midst of the recruitment process and they are all on track to getting jobs before they graduate in March 2014.
“The CTC Wings programme works well for our University because CTC Aviation provides a highly professional environment for our students with a sole focus on airline-oriented training. The training centre in Hamilton is a truly multicultural environment and this provides an excellent base for our students to become international citizens while doing their flight training.”
JF Oberlin is a private university with around 9000 students. Aviation students do 18 months of study there first before relocating to CTC for two years of training, then back to Tokyo for a further six months before graduating.
According to Julian So, the economic benefit to the Waikato region of New Zealand is around $8 million each year.