< PreviousWell known NZ aviator Keith Skilling flying Hurricane P3717 near Duxford in England. This was the 24Well known NZ aviator Keith Skilling flying Hurricane P3717 near Duxford in England. This was the 24th time Keith has displayed at the Flying Legends Air Show. Gavin Conroy image. F KKiwiFlyer Magazine Issue 59 42 Kiwi Flyers Overseas - Duxford where the Hurricane is based to Duxford for the show. Check the centrefold. Hurricane P3717 is a significant machine. It flew in the Battle of Britain where it was shot up by several ME-110s on one mission but got back to base, and the pilot shot down an ME-110 as well! P3717 is estimated to still contain 40% of the original airframe. Keith and I drove from Duxford to Old Warden where a Harvard was waiting for our use as the camera plane. All we needed to do was push the Hurricane out of the Hangar, pre- flight, sign the paperwork and we were off. There seems to be an idea that photo flights go on for a long time to get the photos, but nothing could be further from the truth. Time was tight; it always is as running these aircraft is not a cheap exercise. We took off and headed to Duxford, Keith joined up, click, click, and six minutes later he was gone. After we landed at Duxford we had a de-brief, Keith and I caught up with John Romain to look around some of the aeroplanes and that was the day done and dusted. For a Warbird Nut like me it is stuff dreams are made of. At this point I had flown more than 30 hours in camera planes alongside 76 different aircraft during this trip and was exhausted. I willingly grounded myself from any further flying, well apart from the trip home! Many thanks go to Matt for pulling everything together. I was flying from another airfield with a lot of military aircraft in the days leading up to Flying Legends (more on that in the next issue) and could not use phones on the tarmac so had no comms. Plus we only had time to refuel and take off again for days on end so access to emails was near impossible. I was very reliant on Matt and Keith to make it work and thanks to them it did! Gavin Conroy Douglas DC-6 operated by the Flying Bulls Collection. Another Flying Bulls aircraft, this time the Lockheed P-38 Lightning. F K Hangar 1, Steele Road Phone Paul on 07 843 1200 or 021 743 033 Hamilton Airport Email: paul@centralaero.nz www.centralaero.nz Owner & Chief Engineer: David Ives Heli Maintenance Ltd, Harewood Aviation Park, 4/25 Aviation Drive, PO Box 39144, Christchurch 8051 03 359 1001 or 027 528 5121 info@helimaintenance.com www.helimaintenance.com Canterbury’s first and only CAA Part 145 approved helicopter maintenance facility We also offer the following local modifications: l Snow Shoes for R44 & MD500 l EC120 Lead Acid Battery Installation l R22/R44 Pitch Links Repair l MD500 Collective Lock l MD500 Hockey Stick Repair R22 / R44 2200 hour Rebuild Kits, 12 year inspections and helicopter refurbishment. Let us provide a quote for your kit and / or rebuild.The KiwiFlyer Guide to Aviation Training September 2018 Supplement PRIVATE COMMERCIAL RECREATIONAL AEROPLANES HELICOPTERS MICROLIGHTS AUTOGYROS GLIDERS ARTICLES A Head Start for Young Flyers Flying for Air New Zealand Pilotless Airliners If you want to be a Helicopter Pilot Pilots who have flown a glider are better pilots Obtaining your first medicalWELCOME to the KiwiFlyer Guide to Aviation Training in New Zealand. This special annual supplement includes articles related to aviation training as well as profiles and some great advice from numerous leading flight training providers from around the country. Participants in this Guide cover a broad training spectrum and readers will find a wealth of opportunity whether it be a microlight certificate for Sunday flying, a PPL to take the family on holiday by helicopter, through to fully structured programmes designed to set the career pilot directly up for airline employment. There are articles covering how to get a cost-effective start in aviation whilst still at school, what to expect on your first medical, what an airline career might look like, how to appeal to a helicopter operator, and more. There are also many snippets of wisdom amongst the various training provider profiles. More than 1000 copies of this issue of the magazine are being sent to Careers Officers at every NZ Secondary School and students interested in aviation will find much useful information within. Aviation training is not limited to just practical and theory tuition either. Academic opportunities abound for University degrees in aviation disciplines that can extend all the way to Doctorate level research. KiwiFlyer Magazine Issue 59 44 The KiwiFlyer Guide to Aviation Training New Zealand is well served by several organisations who make it their business to help develop interest from the next generation of aviation enthusiasts and professionals. Mostly volunteer based, these organisations offer a variety of ways a young person can become involved in aviation either for general interest, recreation, or with a career in mind. The information we featured on these organisations in our 2017 Training Guide was well-received, so here’s a recap. Thanks again to Mark Woodhouse for putting the words together. So, you like the idea of flying, but people have told you it is hard to get into and very expensive. Well to an extent it is, but you might be interested to hear that there are many individuals, organisations, programmes and events that will help you explore and progress your interest, some at little or no cost. In this article I will tell you about opportunities that are focused on helping you begin the process of learning to fly, such as, but not necessarily limited to: - The Walsh; - Youth Glide; - Air Training Corp; - ServiceIQ Aviation Gateway Training; - Young Eagles; and, - Aero Clubs. The Walsh Memorial Scout Flying School The Walsh is an annual two week tented flying camp held at Matamata in the Waikato for 16 to 20 year olds. The camp is a National School of Scouting NZ and is supported by The Royal Aeronautical Society and a number of major corporates such as Air New Zealand and Airways Corp, as well as many smaller companies, individuals and the local community. The school is established for up to 44 Ab-Initio (which literally means “from the beginning”) Students, 26 Returned Students and up to 4 Student Staff. Members of Scouting NZ have priority for places up to the end or August and then remaining places are open to all applicants. Overall about 40 to 50% of the students are from Scouting and about 25 to 30% are female, with that proportion growing. The school has been over-subscribed for many years now, so a ballot is run to determine which of the applicants is fortunate enough to gain a position. That said there are usually withdrawals for one reason or another, so the waiting list does get used. All staff, instructors and controllers attend on a voluntary basis, with varying levels of support from their employers. For more information go to www.scouts.org.nz then click on National Schools/Flying Youth Glide The Youth Glide Soaring Development Camp is a live-in event aimed at taking any gliding youngster, at any stage of flying, and helping them to develop further. These events are run by Youth Glide NZ which is a not-for-profit organisation providing education, tuition and training for all relevant skills necessary for gliding in NZ. Participating students range in ages from 14 to 24. Instructors, tow pilots and other helpers give freely of their time and expertise, many of whom come back year after year. The programme is augmented by great educational and social events. There is much more to Youth Glide than just getting young people into gliding; they benefit in many other ways such as providing positive interactions with adults and giving them A Head Start for Young Flyers About this Guide There is also much included for existing pilots to consider in terms of getting current for summer or refreshing and extending skills to a higher level. How about an aerobatic or autogyro rating to add some variety to your flying? Even those who might not be immediately interested in training for themselves should find it interesting to look through this guide and observe the many and varied training approaches that are available. The range extends from small companies and personal one-on-one tuition through to large corporates with fleets of aircraft, an array of lecture facilities and purpose built student accommodation, and everything in between. In most cases, participants in the guide provided their own material for publishing and often are speaking directly to prospective students. Several have taken the opportunity to tell of student achievements that they are justifiably proud of. Our industry is a close one and word of mouth is a frequent and trusted form of recommendation. If someone asks for your advice on matters of training, please refer them to this Guide which is also available for download from our website along with most other KiwiFlyer articles and back issues. 45 2018 #4 goals for lifelong learning, recreation and careers. Over the years many great friendships have been cemented at these camps, with competition for places at future camps now becoming quite tough. While Youth Glide began in Omarama and Canterbury a similar but separate camp is now being run at Greytown in the Wairarapa and Youth Glide groups are now active in most gliding clubs. There is actually an awful lot of effort, time and money going into helping young people fly gliders. For more information see the separate article later in this issue. The Air Training Corp (ATC) National Aviation Course The Air Training Corp is part of the New Zealand Cadet Forces (NZCF) and is for both girls and boys aged 13 to 18. The NZCFs are a voluntary, disciplined, uniformed youth leadership training organisation and while they are not part of the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF), they are directed by the Chief of Defence Force, on behalf of the Minister of Defence, and are supported in partnership by the NZDF and the community. One of the major events within the ATC is the National Aviation Course, which is a week-long flying course held at RNZAF Base Woodbourne in January each year. While their friends were hitting the beach over the summer break, these ATC students spent the week studying everything from aircraft maintenance, pre-flight checks and radio procedures, to flying with a general aviation flying instructor. By the end of the course the ATC cadets aim to pass their flight radio exam and get their wings by making their first solo flight. In the words of one parent; “.... had an amazing time and came back so inspired and motivated. We were thrilled about her achievements, so whomever needs to hear ‘thanks’ we cannot say it enough!” The National Aviation Course is now a well established and successful feature of the ATC annual calendar. The course enjoys a good level of financial support and awards from a number of very generous sponsors for which they are always most grateful. For more information go to www.http://cadetforces.mil.nz/ about/air-training-corps.htm ServiceIQ Aviation Gateway Training ServiceIQ is the Industry Training Organisation (ITO) for aviation (including pilots), travel, tourism, museums, hospitality and retail, and is committed to helping young New Zealanders make a start in their careers. ServiceIQ offers a wide range of training opportunities including the Aviation Gateway programme. The purpose of this programme is to enable schools to provide senior students (year 11 and above) with access to structured workplace learning that helps them to kick-start their aviation career by gaining foundation knowledge, skills and experience, and to gain unit standards while doing so. A student’s ultimate career role could be as a pilot, flight attendant, aeronautical engineer, airport operations manager, air traffic controller, academic, regulator, tourism operator, or many other related occupations. The Aviation Gateway programme can also help students make professional contacts that can open doors in the future. There are two types of Gateway training programmes available, either a programme ready made by ServiceIQ, or a DIY programme, where your school’s Gateway Coordinators select the best ServiceIQ products to create a tailor-made learning programme for you. Both programmes take place in the classroom and/or an industry workplace. ServiceIQ’s Aviation Gateway training programme is a fantastic way for you to get a feel for what it’s like to fly an aircraft, plus gain insights about other aviation industry roles. If your passion is to be a pilot, this first-time flying experience helps you gain acceptance into full-time flight training when you leave school. You will do your training flight with a CAA qualified flying instructor at a local aero club during term time. The programme usually takes about 10 weeks, and normally runs between 1.00pm and 3.30pm. Students who successfully complete the programme will have gained: - Up to 18 credits towards a national qualification; - Up to three flights towards their Private Pilot’s Licence (PPL); - Real skills and knowledge of the aviation industry; and, - An insight into many different career options. ServiceIQ also offers a Gateway “Flying NZ” Flight Training Scholarship to a stand-out student who has successfully completed the Gateway Aviation training. While the ServiceIQ Aviation Gateway training programme is not offered in all schools, it may be available in yours, so ask your school Careers Advisor, and if its not, encourage them to explore setting it up. For more information go to www.serviceiq.org.nz/schools/ gateway-training/serviceiq-gateway-aviation-training/ Young Eagles Young Eagles is an aviation immersion programme for young people between the ages of 12 and 18. It is offered by many aero clubs under the auspices of Flying New Zealand (the trading name of the Royal New Zealand Aero Clubs - RNZAC). Young Eagle members will get the opportunity to experience many different aspects of aviation, from visiting air traffic control units and maintenance organisations, through to flying in an aircraft, with an instructor of course. Young Eagles will have the opportunity to actually control the aircraft, experience how it works and to look down on the world from above. Whether you are interested in aviation for a career or for recreation, or you are just curious to find out what it is all about, Young Eagles might just be the starting point for your aviation adventure. If you are interested contact your local aero club and see if they offer the Young Eagles programme. If the aero club in your area doesn’t offer the Young Eagles programme, maybe your enthusiasm will encourage them to join. For more information go to www.flyingnz.co.nz/youngeagles To conclude As you can see, there are opportunities out there which will help you learn about the aviation industry and help you take those first tentative steps toward either a career or a recreational interest in aviation. The opportunities I have touched on above may not be all that exist, and to the others I apologise for not mentioning you. If you are interested, don’t sit back and wait for it to come to you. My observation is that to be a professional in our industry takes a determined investment of effort, time and to some extent or other money. It is not easy, but there are those prepared to help you, and most aviation professionals I know are passionate about their chosen careers. If you want it - go for it. And don’t let set-backs along the way discourage you. Persevere.KiwiFlyer Magazine Issue 59 46 The KiwiFlyer Guide to Aviation Training Flying for Air New Zealand Every year at about the start of September, the Air NZ Aviation Institute holds a careers evening presentation for would-be pilots. Most of those attending are students in their final year or two of secondary school – often with parents alongside. Attendance grows every year, with many hundreds at the two Auckland sessions this year. The four Aviation Institute Preferred Flight Training Organisations all run information booths at the evening – and were swamped with prospective students. The evening is run to help students make decisions about pursuing an airline career and to inform them how to best position themselves for success. There is of course, also an element of Air NZ self- promotion included for good measure. Those attending learned of the opportunity to not be tied to ‘nine to five’ workdays, and to live and work in different parts of New Zealand during regional flying duties. Regional flying is varied rather than always being the same pilot/ route combinations – and in fact involves a lot more ‘flying’ than short or long haul airliner trips. Some regional legs span little more than 20 minutes between take-off and landing. The obvious step up from regional flying is onto the jet fleet, where A320 sector lengths run up to five hours. Sometimes these trips are overnight and sometimes there-and-back.Then there’s long haul on the 777 / 787 fleet all the way to London which could typically be a ten day trip involving one night in L.A., two in London, two or three more in L.A. and then home. Or a trip just to L.A. would typically cover four days, with just one night in L.A. In long-haul flying particularly, there’s a lot of sleep management involved. If there’s no nine-to-five schedules in an airline career, what happens to weekends and time off? Everything revolves around rosters, which although designed to be fair to everyone, you’ll get very little say in (special requests notwithstanding). On the jet fleet you could expect around 70 hours of flying time each month spread over a 28 day roster with a minimum of 10 days off in that period. Short haul flyers could expect there to be 7-10 overnights and 10 days off in a roster. Regional flyers will find themselves on a similar roster with 10 days off per 28, including one weekend off per roster. Across all the disciplines but particularly long haul, pilots will often find themselves with big chunks of time off – great for lifestyles and especially those who live outside of Auckland. How does one get to move between the flying disciplines and levels within each? You ‘bid’ for the roles you want and are then considered when the opportunity comes up. Of course you can’t bid unless you meet the pre-requisite requirements for the role. To a large degree, your bidding success will depend on your seniority in the organisation – based on your joining date, though seniority resets upon entering the jet fleet. Thus long service can become significantly rewarded. Having set the scene for what to expect of an airline career, the presentation turned to training. For as long as anyone involved in the industry can remember, hour building has always been the most difficult part to achieve. Scrounging hours and working for nearly nothing to get ahead in the industry has almost always been a right of passage. Many choose to take on instructing roles to help put hours in their logbook, however the (wise) advice at the presentation was not to instruct unless you really want to. Having the right skills, behaviours, and desire is paramount. With demand for pilots increasing apace, airlines are accepting recruits with far less logged hours than traditionally, and the opportunities to find jobs that will deliver the hours required of course increases as pilot turnover through these roles also increases. What are the entry hours requirements? What was traditionally 1000 is recently now as low as 700. And the scale of Air NZ as a pilot employer? There are currently circa 1100 pilots in the jet fleet and 500 in the turbo prop fleet. Most pilots joining Air NZ will start off with Air Nelson which has employed 130 new pilots in the last three years. What you need is the right stuff: passion, resilience, discipline, time management, strong communication, good coordination, good health, learning aptitude, self-motivation, and the ability to take constructive criticism. The latter being particularly important because you’ll face 30 years of being ‘sim’ checked every six months in situations designed to test you under pressure. You need great people and social skills too, spending long hours in a confined space alongside your fellow crew members. And you need to be prepared to stay fit and healthy. Medical checks are annual until the age of 40, and six- monthly thereafter. Students at the presentation also learned how important it is to maintain good decision-making from an early age. Criminal convictions are an automatic disqualifier, as are excessive driving demerit points. If you can’t be trusted to drive a car safely, you’re hardly likely to be given a licence to fly an aircraft. Decisions made when young, can in fact have a significant bearing on future opportunities. (And there were indeed a few concerned looking faces in the audience.) There are of course, also many career opportunities beyond the flight deck with Air New Zealand. The company is always looking for people interested in technical roles across the aviation spectrum. KiwiFlyer Magazine Issue 59 48 The potentially destructive aspect of this nonsense is, that at the very time when the industry is struggling to attract and train sufficient numbers of young professionals to support its expansion, in all fields not just piloting, those who may be interested are hearing that the field they are considering investing themselves in may not exist very soon. The purpose of this article is to argue that airliners will not be flown solely by computers. Probably never, but certainly not in my lifetime, nor in the lifetime of my children or my grandchildren. So, if you are considering taking up the challenge of entering our industry as a pilot, of investing the required effort, time, emotional energy and money, I declare that I believe that you will be adequately rewarded. R2D2 will not usurp your role! Sure, airlines would save significant costs if “AI” could be developed to the point where computers could replace human pilots, and ticket prices may fall (a little), but is it feasible? The term “AI” (Artificial Intelligence) is bandied about very loosely. AI has never been achieved, ever, anywhere in the world. Certainly, very clever programmers have developed computer software to a fantastic level, even to the stage where computers are programmed to “learn” from events (experience?) but that is a Airbus A330 cockpit Airliners will be pilotless in the near future. Yeah, Nah. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the opportunitity for a sensationalist headline, mainstream media often makes reports of some expert or another proffering an opinion that the pending pilot shortage will at least partially be solved by the pilotless aircraft of the future. KiwiFlyer Contributor (and A-Cat Flight Instructor, GA Flight Examiner, long time CFI of the Walsh Memorial Scout Flying School, Boeing 787-900 First Officer, and owner of Waypoints Aviation), Mark Woodhouse, has an opinion on this matter too. Mark writes: I hear all too often in the media that commercial airliners will soon be flown autonomously, i.e., by computers alone. Sans pilots. In fact, the other day I read that this will occur within ten years. Whatever… I would argue that this is abject nonsense, proffered by those who understand neither piloting nor the current state of computer development. Consider how long it takes to develop any aircraft, let alone one incorporating such a leap in technology. The latest generation of aircraft began design 10 to 15 years ago, and while there is limited military application of remotely piloted drones, the world is decades away from true AI. The KiwiFlyer Guide to Aviation Training2018 #4 49 quantum leap away from true AI. In Europe there was a multi-billion Euro project to develop even the most basic true AI, yet the results are far from encouraging. The following are extracts from one of a number of articles I researched for this article. They are from “When Will We Finally Achieve True Artificial Intelligence?” By Thomas Hornigold - January 01, 2018 The field of artificial intelligence goes back a long way, but many consider it was officially born when a group of scientists at Dartmouth College got together for a summer, back in 1956. Computers had, over the last few decades, come on in incredible leaps and bounds; they could now perform calculations far faster than humans. Optimism, given the incredible progress that had been made, was rational. It’s fitting that the industry of predicting when we’d have human-level intelligent AI was born at around the same time as the AI industry itself. In fact, it goes all the way back to Turing’s first paper on “thinking machines,” where he predicted that the Turing Test - machines that could convince humans they were human - would be passed in 50 years, by 2000. Nowadays, of course, people are still predicting it will happen within the next 20 years, perhaps most famously Ray Kurzweil. There are so many different surveys of experts and analyses that you almost wonder if AI researchers aren’t tempted to come up with an auto reply: “I’ve already predicted what your question will be, and no, I can’t really predict that.” Stuart Armstrong’s survey looked for trends in these predictions. Specifically, there were two major cognitive biases he was looking for. The first was the idea that AI experts predict true AI will arrive (and make them immortal) conveniently just before they’d be due to die. This is the “Rapture of the Nerds” criticism people have levelled at Kurzweil - his predictions are motivated by fear of death, desire for immortality, and are fundamentally irrational. The ability to create a super-intelligence is taken as an article of faith. There are also criticisms by people working in the AI field who know first-hand the frustrations and limitations of today’s AI. The second was the idea that people always pick a time span of 15 to 20 years. That’s enough to convince people they’re working on something that could prove revolutionary very soon (people are less impressed by efforts that will lead to tangible results centuries down the line), but not enough for you to be embarrassingly proved wrong. Of the two, Armstrong found more evidence for the second one - people were perfectly happy to predict AI after they died, although most didn’t, but there was a clear bias towards “15-20 years from now” in predictions throughout history. One of the problems of complex technological systems is that you never know where a potentially catastrophic problem can begin. And what concerns me most is the infrastructure, the wiring, the bugs in algorithms. How often does your smart phone let you down, or an App crash? How often are Apps, even the most developed, being updated to rectify some bug or other? Not much help if your aircraft is over the Pacific, four or five hours flying time away from a suitable airfield! Humans are very good at creating complex technological systems. However, we are not as good at managing them, and not very good at all when something goes wrong with them.Next >