Pacific Flight Services Launches "Operation Airborne" to Counter Worldwide Flight Instructor Shortage

Sydney, Australia, June 22, 2008 --(PR.com)-- Sydney, Australia, flight school, Pacific Flight Services, today announced "Operation Airborne", a training program aimed at significantly lifting the numbers of Flight Instructors in the region.

Flight Instructors are in desperately short supply, explained Sydney's Pacific Flight Services Manager, Capt. Rod Crane.

"Operation Airborne is a result of the global airline pilot shortage," says Crane. "The airlines need experienced pilots, but where are they going to get them from? The most obvious place is to poach them from flying schools.

"Flight Instructors are highly trained, well above ordinary Commercial Pilot standards. They have to be, in order to train Commercial Pilots. On top of that they have professional experience, corporate experience and, especially, professional attitudes and they accumulate command hours rapidly. All this makes them highly desirable to the airline recruiters."

Capt. Crane explains that the problem is going to compound, however. "Because the airlines are taking so many Instructors, there are fewer Instructors to train the new pilots that are needed to manage the global surge in aviation. That's why we have launched Operation Airborne at Pacific Flight, to train as many new Instructors as we can. We are already one of the few schools in Sydney - perhaps in Australia - who are seriously training Instructors. Operation Airborne will definitely make us the biggest."

Pacific Flight is not training Flight Instructors as a matter of charity to other schools, however. Says Crane, "We have historically employed most of the Flight Instructors we train. Just like everyone else, we lose Instructors to the airlines. One of our ex-Instructors is now flying with a European airline, others have joined regional airlines in Australia and one has just recently gone straight into the QANTAS 747 fleet. So naturally we have to replace them and we like to do that with Instructors we can be certain have been trained up to our standards."

Pacific Flight Services' Operation Airborne will include regular bi-monthly intakes to its eight-week full-time courses, or more often if demand requires it.

###