Pilot civil aviation pilot

"Flying in the sky": iron ore is difficult to mine.

"This is because of the particularity of the pilot's career: it takes several years of training time and lifelong training." Tian, dean of China Civil Aviation Management Cadre College, pointed out that at Shanghai Hongqiao Airport, after midnight 12, several planes are likely to take off and land in the nearby airspace, which often lasts until 6 am. For the normal flight of busy civil aviation flights during the day, pilots who have been trained by simulators often carry out this training at this time. Only when the real aircraft is used to complete the take-off and landing required by the training program can they formally obtain the qualification to fly into the sky.

According to industry insiders, this is only a microcosm of the long process of pilot training. It is said that the aviation market in China is just like the steel market in China, and the demand for pilots is as urgent as the demand for iron ore, and it is much more difficult for a pilot to grow up to maturity than to mine a ton of iron ore.

"This is because of the particularity of the pilot's career: it takes several years of training time and lifelong training." Tian, Dean of China Civil Aviation Management Cadre College, pointed out.

A staff member of Spring Airlines Flight Recruitment Office told China Business News that the composition of pilots in China is relatively diverse. From the beginning of selecting students, there are different components, generally, there are two kinds: "great change" and "cultivation".

The so-called "driving change" refers to the change from a college student to a pilot, which generally includes "2+2", "3+ 1" and "4+ 1". The former refers to two years of general college education, followed by two years of professional flight driving education, and "3+ 1" refers to three years.

"Trained students" were directly selected as pilots for training after graduating from high school. Once selected as a "student", he will receive a four-year complete flight theory course and multiple flight trainings at the aviation school. Generally, they will enter flight training after learning ground theory for two to two and a half years.

The advantage of "big change to driving" is that the training period is short, which is more suitable for emerging airlines, such as private airlines with large pilot gap; The flight theory and practice of "training students" are better, but the cost of training "training students" is greater than "changing driving" because the flight course itself is more expensive than ordinary university courses.

"Cultivating students" can be that aviation schools recruit students according to standards, and then let airlines choose; It can also be the airline's own targeted training. However, either way, students sign contracts with airlines as soon as they enter school, and the education and training expenses are paid by airlines. Students work in companies after graduation.

"There are many people in the society who are willing to be pilots, but there are very few who are really qualified. For example, in the recruitment of Spring Airlines, it is necessary to test the students' balance ability, spatial memory ability and pressure resistance through flight ability test. "The above-mentioned staff told reporters that the general candidates have to go through data screening, telephone screening, initial interview, physical examination by the Civil Aviation Hospital of East China Bureau, and finally political examination, review and final review before they can obtain training qualifications.

The conditions for applying for a pilot in Shenzhen Airlines, which the reporter saw, also show that the applicants are male, under the age of 26 (inclusive), and have a college degree or above recognized by the state. In addition, except for the height 168CM (inclusive), the monocular naked eye C-word table is above 0.5 (inclusive), and there is no history of vision correction surgery, strabismus, color blindness, and color weakness.

In addition, it takes a long time to become a qualified pilot. It takes four to five years to train students alone. After graduating from aviation school, students must take the technical level examination supervised by airlines and regional administrations. If they pass the exam, they will only get a flight license. In order to truly board the plane and become the co-pilot, it is necessary to use the simulator in the airline for transition training. Because the students trained by the aviation school are trained by general-purpose aircraft, mainly small aircraft, and the aircraft actually operated by airlines are composed of many types. Besides the difference between Airbus and Boeing, Boeing's 737 aircraft is also very different from Boeing's 747 aircraft. This process will take another three to five months.

After the simulator training, it will be transferred to this training, and the real aircraft will take off and land at least 20 times, and in order to stagger the normal flights during the day, it will be mainly carried out from midnight to 6 am on 12, or transferred to an airport with less traffic.

After passing the test, the growth experience of pilots can be roughly divided into nine stages: observer (SS), all-right seat (FR), first-class co-pilot (F 1), second-class co-pilot (F2), third-class co-pilot (F3), fourth-class co-pilot (F4), left-seat co-pilot (FL), captain (C) and flight instructor.

At this time, a person can "transform" into a pilot, and this "transformation" process usually takes about 5 to 7 years.

"Lack of flight": Foreign captains come to fill the vacancy

In order to make up for the shortage of domestic pilots, airlines began to seek to recruit foreign pilots. Shenzhen Airlines has 75 foreign pilots. Actually, it's much easier to be a captain in China than in the United States. In the United States, it is usually a 55-year-old captain and two co-pilots aged 40-50. The captain retired and the co-pilot had a bright future. It is the complicated pilot training mode and the long time that have caused the bottleneck of China's civil aviation development and further intensified the contradiction.

The "collective" return flight of China Eastern Airlines in Yunnan Province surprised the Civil Aviation Administration (FAA) of the United States, and immediately requested that courses on pilot safety management rules and regulations be added to American aviation schools, such as courses violating the anti-terrorism regulations of the United States. "This incident shows that there are major defects in the professionalism of pilots. In the United States, this incident touched the Federal Aviation Safety Administration. " An official of the FAA in the United States pointed out.

In fact, the "March 3 1 Return Event" not only shocked the whole world, but also reflected the problems and embarrassment faced by China's pilot market.

According to an insider, the average annual salary of pilots in private airlines is 500,000-600,000 yuan, while the annual salary of pilots in state-owned airlines is less than 400,000 yuan. The big gap has also become an important reason to induce pilots to "jump ship".

Gao Hongfeng, former deputy director of the Civil Aviation Administration, once pointed out that it is estimated that we need to increase more than 9,000 pilots by the end of the 11th Five-Year Plan, but realistically speaking, our actual training capacity is only about 7,000, with a gap of more than 2,000.

The demand of new private airlines for pilots is also a force that cannot be ignored in stirring the market. Since 2004, 39 private airlines have applied to CAAC, and 17 has been put into operation. According to the calculation of one plane with five crew members 10 pilots, these newly established airlines tried their best to introduce aircraft to expand their scale and reduce their costs, but they also suffered from unmanned aircraft.

In addition, the number of simulators in China is very small, so it is difficult to meet the needs of many airline pilots for simulators. Because pilots in flight have to retrain simulators twice a year, the number of simulators in China can only meet the requirements of retraining, while traditional large companies such as China Eastern Airlines have their own pilot training bases, which can only meet the training ability of their own pilots. Because the import price of a simulator is150,000 US dollars, it also needs maintenance fees, and the foreign one-hour teacher fee is 128~ 130 US dollars, so some domestic private airlines do not have their own simulators.

Therefore, many airlines send their pilots abroad for simulation training. Generally speaking, a group has two members. One group needs training for 40 hours, and the cost is 3500~4000 RMB per hour. After the simulator training, the cost of switching to this training field is conservatively calculated to be about 200,000 yuan, including airport take-off and landing fees, jet fuel and teacher fees.

In addition, China's ability to train pilots in aviation schools is also stretched.

According to the reporter's understanding, the aviation schools that can train pilots in China mainly include China Civil Aviation Flight Academy, civil aviation university of china and Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Among them, China Civil Aviation Flight Academy has its own complete set of teaching resources and equipment, which can meet the study and training of 800 students. However, due to the serious shortage of pilots in the market, the flight academy has enrolled 1.400 ~ 1.500 students, and their educational ability can no longer meet the training requirements.

Tianjin Civil Aviation University and Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics are only responsible for students' ground theory study, and then send students to the United States for flight training. Such training fees are sometimes cheaper, because there are many aircraft instructors in the United States and the airspace is open.

Beijing Pan American International Aviation School, the first private aviation school in China established in 2003, also encountered operational difficulties. The training base in Shijiazhuang chosen by the company is surrounded by military flight bases, so it is often impossible to get flight time. Later, auxiliary training bases were established in Handan and Baotou, and the climatic conditions were not ideal, which could only meet the flight conditions for half a year.

An aviation industry insider told reporters that for private aviation schools, although they can get licenses, they can't get good airspace resources and faculty resources, which is an important reason that restricts the rapid expansion of China's pilot training ability, because 70% of China's airspace is under military control, and civil aircraft and trainers can't fly freely in the sky; In the United States, 80% of the airspace is civilian, and the air force training base can even fly separately from civil aviation.

Actually, it's much easier to be a captain in China than in the United States. Therefore, "many foreign pilots are also willing to come to China, because they can be used as springboard because of their rapid promotion, but they are all co-pilots. When they go back, they will die, so they generally don't want to stay here after obtaining the captain's license." An airline internal middle-level told reporters.

There are many obstacles for CAAC to recruit foreign co-pilots, and the approval for introducing foreign captains will be more relaxed. According to the reporter's investigation, the captains from Brazil, Argentina and other South American countries came to China. Either he will retire soon (60 is generally required abroad, and China can fly for another five years), or there are technical differences. For example, in foreign countries, there are airline captains, not responsible captains, who do not operate the aircraft independently, while in China, there is no distinction between airline captains and responsible captains.

In addition, there are many restrictions for foreign pilots to fly to China. For example, according to the relevant regulations, foreign pilots are not allowed to fly in military-civilian airports such as Qingdao, Yantai and Dalian, or in sensitive military facilities.

Looking up to the sky: the market was torn apart.

Because the shortage of pilots is difficult to change in the short term, it is increasingly urgent to speed up the training of civil aviation core technical talents through multiple channels, and the pilot training and mobile market are also quietly changing, and they are beginning to move closer to foreign pilot training models.

At the beginning of 2006, Shenzhen Airlines took the lead in proposing the idea of training pilots at their own expense, accepted the first batch of self-funded flight students and established Shenzhen Airlines' own aviation school, Kunpeng International Flight School.

At the same time, in order to broaden the pilot training channels, Shenzhen Airlines has also cooperated with famous foreign flight schools such as Pan American International Flight School, CAPT Aviation School, United GFT Flight Academy and Monton Aviation School in Canada.

Yue Xin (a pseudonym) is one of the self-funded pilots. After graduating from college, he entered Shenzhen Airlines Kunpeng International Flying School and became an employee of Shenzhen Airlines. Studying here with pay, the monthly salary is 3500 yuan. If all goes well, it will take him two years to get a pilot's license, but he has no relevant education.

Before entering the school, Yue Xin signed a 15-year contract with Shenzhen Airlines, instead of a 99-year indefinite contract signed by pilots. At the same time, the tuition fee of 600,000 yuan was also guaranteed by Shenzhen Airlines and borrowed from the bank (generally at the commercial loan interest rate), and was repaid in installments after Yue Xin graduated and officially worked in Shenzhen Airlines.

According to the reporter's understanding, when Shenzhen Airlines recruited flight students in 2007, 5,000 people like Yue Xin signed up, of whom 1 120 people passed the written test and interview, and finally 307 people passed the physical examination. Last month, Shenzhen Airlines began to openly recruit 220 flight students for the whole country.

Shenzhen Airlines has also sent four groups of flight students to Monton Aviation School in Canada, CAPT Aviation School in the United States, GFT Aviation School in Canada and Monton Aviation School in Canada, and the fifth group of flight students is preparing to send them to aviation schools in Australia for training.

Shenzhen Airlines Kunpeng International Flight School also started the first training at the end of March. In recent years, more and more airlines recruit self-funded pilots like Shenzhen Airlines, and pilot training has gradually shifted from academic education to vocational education.

"In the past, 700,000 training fees like Guanghan Flight Academy were paid by airlines, so airlines were reluctant to let go of any pilot easily. Pilot transfer is gradually marketized, and pilot training also needs to be marketized. " An executive of China Eastern Airlines told reporters that in the United States, pilots pay to learn to fly and then apply for airlines. At that time, pilots will have great freedom of transfer. Some students with good financial strength even reported to the aviation school without a loan. In addition, because the expensive training fees need to be paid by students themselves, students' learning attitude is more serious than before.

For the pilot mobile market that has just been liberalized but has little open space, many aviation experts told reporters that it is not realistic to completely liberalize the pilot transfer market because the pilot training market has just been liberalized. Civil aviation needs to put safety and stability first, and too fast liberalization is not conducive to civil aviation stability.

Therefore, the country's restrictions on the flow of pilots are no more than 0 of the number of airline pilots. 5%~ 1%, and the specific proportion shall be determined by each regional administration.

The East China Administration of Civil Aviation called a meeting of all airlines in East China and announced that the pilot flow rate of airlines in East China was limited to 1%. In addition, it is also stipulated that the pilot flow should be settled by airlines through consultation.

In addition, in the reality of the shortage of pilots, while increasing training and introduction, airlines should also do a good job of retaining people, such as constantly being pilots, talking with them and introducing the company's immediate and long-term interests.

In terms of competing for pilots, an aviation industry expert pointed out that after all, the value of pilots has been highly hyped, and airlines should also consider their own market management capabilities. Hiring people with high salaries also threatens to reduce the competitiveness of the company and even lead to losses. With the marketization of pilot training market and the survival of the fittest of airlines, the demand for pilots will eventually reach a state of balance between supply and demand, and market resources will be optimized.