INTERNATIONAL Aviation Alliance says it hopes to have a new batch of cadet pilots from China attend its Mildura flying academy within months.
The alliance, which operates four flying schools out ofMildura Airport, has been decimated by the international travel ban during the COVID-19 pandemic but has joined a new push for the Federal Government to ease restrictions on the international student industry.
Alliance chief executive Simon Clemence said all bar one of the school’s 140 cadets had left the country since the pandemic hit, while staff numbers had dropped from 75 to just five as well as a skeleton crew of maintenance workers.
Mr Clemence said the alliance had formed a “loose collective” with other major flying schools around Australia to get return international student arrivals to Australia “sooner rather than later”.
“We can survive until the middle of next year if that’s what has to happen, but clearly that’s not what we want to happen — we would like to bring our employees back and give them the opportunity to earn an income,” Mr Clemence said.
“Operations have been slowly winding down, the cadets have been going back to China in groups of threes and fours over the past few months and our staff numbers have been winding down, so effectively, we finished up last week,” he said.
The flying school has historically had cadets on 16-week rotations for training before returning to their homeland before the pandemic hit, while staff have also gradually taken up similar positions elsewhere or moved into alternate industries.
“One of our senior instructors has got a job with Virgin, others have moved away looking for work further afield and some came from interstate and have gone back,” he said.
“There are also quite a few who have stayed here and got other jobs fruit picking and whatever else they can do to bide their time until we restart.
“I’d expect that we would probably pick up anywhere from 50 to 70 per cent of our original staff back again.
“We’re not expecting that to happen tomorrow, but we certainly would like to see it happen earlier than the middle of next year.”
Mr Clemence said the return of international students to the flying school would come with strict provisos.
“The offer that we’ve put is that the students would be fully vaccinated before they came, they would quarantine in China before they got on a plane and quarantine when they got back here at our expense,” he said.
“It’s a pretty safe scenario — we even offered to provide charter flights so they didn’t run the risk of being contaminated by anyone else on aircraft, so it’s a pretty smooth and safe transition from China to here.
“The risk factor coming from China is pretty low to start with and then, when you put in all these support mechanisms in place to make sure that everything is squeaky clean, by the time the cadets got to here or Port Macquarie or Wagga or wherever they went to you could be assured they are probably some of the safest people in the community.”
But Mr Clemence said that while a return date for international students would be in the hands of the Federal Government, the alliance had hoped to return to operations by August-September “or earlier”.
“The Federal Government is certainly keen to try to get back to some sort of a COVID-normal with various industries, including the international student industry, so all of the flying schools are certainly trying to persuade governments to consider us in their thinking around COVID-normal and when that might be,” he said.
“That may be a problem for us as far as the State Government goes and while we gain some comfort about what’s happening in New South Wales at the moment, the Victorian experience is a bit of a barrier for us here.”
