Firms hope to train Chinese pilots here

China's growing middle class is creating a need for airline pilots. Photo / Julian Herzog

An aviation trade mission has visited China to put New Zealand firms on the radar of a potentially lucrative market in training Chinese pilots.

New Zealand consul-general and trade commissioner in Guangzhou Pat English said the mission last week included Beijing and Shanghai.

It focused on aviation training for the commercial and private sectors, including pilots, specialist training for specific tasks and possibly engineering components.

"There is a potential opportunity opening up in China and there's also very strong capability back in New Zealand to deliver into this sector," English said.

A growing middle class meant more people were using commercial airlines domestically and internationally.

There was also growing private interest among the wealthy in learning to fly, more commercial work for helicopters and opportunities in fire-fighting and search and rescue.

The cost of training a pilot was about $120,000 for a fixed wing aircraft. Helicopters and training for specialist tasks such as search and rescue were worth more.

"And then on top of that again what the Chinese are also looking for is instructors ... a lot more work again," English said.

"If you could get 20, 30, 40, 50 [trainees] over the next years, then it very, very quickly adds up."

Some pilots also needed English language training.

New Zealand had been training pilots since 1916, he said. '

'We have just under 10,000 pilots in New Zealand, we've got approximately one aircraft per 1000 people."

New Zealand trained about 400 international and between 1000 and 1200 domestic pilots a year.

"It's definitely not an easy market, our competition is here, the Americans, Canadian, Australians, they're all here as well," English said.

The mission met with about 18 companies on the trip, including helicopter firms and airlines.

"Some of them just about wanted to talk turkey at the table, others it's early relationship days."

Aviation New Zealand chief executive John Nicholson said China could train about half the commercial pilots it needed and they had no option but to go overseas for the rest.

"So what we are seeing in China is that there are some classic requirements to collaborate between companies to achieve the scale and volume that the Chinese companies are looking for," Nicholson said.

Ian Calvert, chief executive of CTC Aviation, said the Hamilton-based company trained more than 200 cadets a year, including for the UK, Europe and Singapore.

"While we may have been able to do this ourselves, the time and the effort to get to see the right people, and the expense and the cost, and the sheer access to the regulators and those sort of things just would not have happened without this sort of mission."

He said from a training perspective New Zealand had a unique and valuable position to grasp because it had the capacity to train the numbers China needed.