Skummelt om flyutdannelse i USA - Asiatiske selskaper

Foreign Airline Pilots, US Flight Schools: Do They Get Enough Training Time in Cockpit?


The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit travels to international flight schools in the Bay Area and across the country. Former instructors question whether the in- flight training is enough for these young pilots before they get into the cockpit of large, wide-body aeroplanes.

The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit travels to international flight schools in the Bay Area and across the country. Former instructors question whether the in- flight training is enough for these young pilots before they get into the cockpit of large, wide-body international commercial jets. Stephen Stock reports.

Several former flight instructors who trained students to fly for different airlines based in Asia say there is a rush to get inexperienced pilots into cockpits of large, wide-body jets to fly long-haul transoceanic flights. These instructors say that rush could be putting the public at risk.

Many of these airlines deny there is a rush or a problem with safety for these pilots. But the airlines admit that there is a growing demand for pilots as commercial airline traffic continues to grow in the Pacific region.

Meanwhile, in the United States, this demand for more and more commercial pilots has created a little known foreign exchange program where young students travel from Asia to flight schools in the U.S. to learn to fly large, commercial jets.

According to the FAA, 23,719 foreign pilots have received a U.S. commercial or air transport license over the last four years. The FAA gave out 4,820 licenses to foreign pilots last year alone. A large portion of those licenses go to pilots from Pacific Rim countries.

Flight schools across California and the rest of the western U.S. often are contracted by foreign airlines to train newly hired pilots how to fly. The Investigative Unit discovered that, for many of these student pilots, their flight from home to the U.S. is their first time in an airplane, much less a cockpit.

Some insiders and former instructors question whether that training is sufficient to fly a large, commercial plane.

Sjekk mer stoff om saken her: http://tinyurl.com/mv7rnxm