By Kerry Ezard & David Learmount in London & Leithen Francis in Singapore
Chinese students are the first to undergo training for the new multi-crew pilot licence
Six student pilots from two Chinese carriers are on course to be the first in the world to graduate from training with multi-crew pilot licences (MPL). China Eastern and Xiamen Airlines, sponsoring the trainees, will be the first airlines to validate in line operation this new licence, approved by the International Civil Aviation Organisation as recently as last in November.
The MPL is intended to enable pilots to take the right-hand seat in an airliner after 240h of flight and simulator training, and could be a key to meeting demand for flightcrew in rapidly growing aviation markets like China and India.
The syllabus for the first MPL course has been devised by Boeing subsidiary Alteon Training in association with Australia's Civil Aviation Safety Agency (CASA). The students are training at Alteon's Brisbane, Queensland base, says director of marketing Roei Ganzarski.
Language skills
Queensland's Griffith University is polishing the students' English language skills, and local Airline Academy Australia is carrying out ground school and basic flying training, says Ganzarski. The "beta test" course began in early January and basic training should be complete by March, at which point six more cadets will join.
In the next stage, cadets will operate small propeller aircraft, although, unlike ab initio training, no private pilot licences will be issued because the course is focused on ensuring cadets are qualified to operate commercial aircraft.
Alteon vice-president Marsha Bell says the MPL programme aims, from the outset, to produce pre-selected first officers for individual airlines, rather than pilots competent to conduct a flight alone, which is what a commercial pilot licence course now requires. But while the course is expected to be shorter, it will not necessarily be cheaper, she says.
The airborne part of the training uses four-seat, glass-cockpit Diamond DA-40s. "We train from the start as a three-man crew: pilot flying, pilot monitoring and pilot observing," says Alteon. As a result, although each student gets only 84h as pilot flying, they get 84h as pilot monitoring - effectively the normal pilot-not-flying role - and again as pilot observing. This is augmented with simulator training in fixed-base devices representing the type pilots will fly in service, with type-rating training conducted in a full-flight simulator as normal.
At all stages, the students have to meet competency objectives set by ICAO and, in this case, CASA.
The MPL syllabus defined by ICAO does not demand that solo aircraft-management ability be tested, because the new licence is aimed at first officers trained from the outset to acquire the crew skill-set demanded by airlines. But CASA has required that 10h of solo experience be incorporated into the course. This addressed International Federation of Airline Pilots Associations reservations about whether first officers would be adequately prepared were the commander to be incapacitated if they had no experience of solo flying.
Later stages of the course will involve Boeing 737 simulator training at Alteon's Brisbane centre. Finally, the MPL syllabus requires 12 take-offs and landings in the real aircraft before the licence is awarded. It will take 15-18 months to complete the course, says Ganzarski.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) is involved in approving the syllabus and will be recognising the MPL in a country that is suffering from a shortage of airline pilots and has too few flying schools to increase the supply of newly trained pilots sufficiently in the short and medium term. Alteon's Bell says CASA, the CAAC and China Eastern and Xiamen Airlines will monitor the line performance of the MPL graduates to determine whether the syllabus needs any modification.
Source: Flight International
