Air China swamps Australian flight school in urgent pilot hunt

SYDNEY – Air China has swamped an Australian flight school with a request for commercial pilots, a sudden demand that points to a looming rebound as the vast Chinese market resumes international travel.

The giant state-run carrier had stopped sending its trainees to the Australian Airline Pilot Academy (AAPA) campus in regional Victoria state after the pandemic halted overseas travel in early 2020. But talks resumed two months ago and the airline, almost out of nowhere, pushed the school to interview more than 100 candidates from China in just four days in April.

“It went from nothing to ‘when can we start?’,” said Mr Chris Hine, executive chairman of the academy. “Logic tells me that we must only be at the start of it. Airlines are still rebuilding.”

The urgency of Air China’s personnel requirements underscores the pace of the post-pandemic passenger rebound – and the sheer number of flight crew needed to sustain it. The world will need more than 600,000 new pilots between 2022 and 2041, and the biggest requirement is in Asia, according to the latest forecast by planemaker Boeing.

The biggest potential crew demands for Chinese airlines may be on overseas services. In North-east Asia, a region dominated by China, international flying is wallowing at 42 per cent below pre-Covid-19 levels, according to the Official Airline Guide. The region’s domestic air travel market is already larger than it was before the pandemic, the data shows.

Air China, which has a fleet of 757 aircraft, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

China’s largest low-cost carrier, Spring Airlines, which is adding more than 10 aircraft every year to build on its almost 120-strong Airbus fleet, needs many more cadet pilots to keep up with the pace of expansion, according to vice-president Zhang Wu’an. The number of new pilots needed annually will soon exceed the pre-Covid-19 rate of around 200, he said, adding that while pilots train mainly in China, some gain qualifications in the United States or Australia.

Recent bumper aircraft orders suggest that the shortfall of pilots needed to fly the world’s commercial fleet in the coming decades may only become more acute. European low-cost airline Ryanair Holdings this month agreed to buy as many as 300 Boeing 737 Max jets with a list value of US$40 billion (S$53.7 billion). Air India in February announced a 470-plane order with Airbus and Boeing in what stands to be the largest purchase in commercial aviation history.

The AAPA serves partly as a crew pipeline for its owner, Australian domestic carrier Rex. But Mr Hine, who is a former chief pilot for Rex, said training overseas personnel is set to become a larger part of the business. The academy is in talks to train pilots for at least two other carriers in China, and its annual training capacity could quadruple to 400 aviators in five years, he said.

Officials from China’s civil aviation regulator are due to inspect AAPA’s main campus in Wagga Wagga, about a five-hour drive south-west from Sydney, in August. This could pave the way for Chinese pilot-training certification that extends beyond the AAPA facility in Ballarat, Victoria, Mr Hine said.

For the interview marathon last month, Air China lined up more than 100 candidates, some in the airline’s offices in Beijing and others in homes across the country. A tiny AAPA team 9,000km away ploughed through back-to-back video calls and the Chinese carrier received a report on the fifth day.

The first of about 70 Air China cadets are due to start training in Australia in June, Mr Hine said. BLOOMBERG