Why 'the best airport has won' the Qantas Pilot Academy
TOOWOOMBA'S Wellcamp Airport was the best option for the first Qantas Pilot Training Academy, the airline's CEO has revealed.
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TOOWOOMBA'S Wellcamp Airport was the best option for the first Qantas Pilot Training Academy, the airline's CEO has revealed.
Alan Joyce yesterday said Qantas chose the Toowoomba location for a number of reasons.
"It has great facilities and it allows us to have the hanger, student accommodation and training rooms (constructed) in the period we have to have them done," he said.
"It allows us to have an airport that has clear skies for over 300 days a year, making it a very attractive location for trainers and students.
"The region itself is a great place to live, work and study. We've already had many students express their interest in moving to Toowoomba for this pilot training."
Mr Joyce said the academy would cost about $35 million to build, with the majority of the funds contributed by private sector.
"The partnerships were unique here, with the State Government and the Wagners fully behind it, which was critical," he said.
"The best airport has won."
The first intake of between 20 and 30 students is expected once construction finishes in July next year.
A Qantas spokeswoman said the airline hoped to train 100 students in the first year of operations and then grow that to 250 in the first few years.
The academy will create ongoing employment for about 160 people in training and support roles.
Qantas has appointed L3 Commercial Aviation as the training provider for the Toowoomba site.
The company will bring about 40 aircraft, known as "bug smashers", to the facility.
Aircraft will be a mix of both single and twin-engine aircraft with glass cockpits.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the announcement of the facility was "fantastic".
"This will be the home for training the next generation of pilots," Ms Palaszczuk said.
"This gives confidence in Queensland."
State Development Minister Cameron Dick said the announcement reiterated the fact the Q in Qantas stood for Qld.
"The government has worked overtime to bring the academy to the state and we are so delighted that Qantas has landed the facility here," Mr Dick said.
"When the facility is up and running it will be putting a quarter of a billion dollars into the local economy."
Toowoomba Mayor Paul Antonio said the announcement was an "exciting moment for Toowoomba".
Facility will not impact travellers to and from Wellcamp
WELLCAMP Airport general manager Sara Hales says extra traffic from the Qantas Pilot Training Academy's 40 light aircraft won't impact commercial flights in and around the airport.
Ms Hales said while the academy would be based out of Wellcamp Airport, it would utilise other airfields in the region, including as far south as Warwick and as north as Kingaroy.
"(This will) lower the amount of traffic at Wellcamp and make full use of available airspace," Ms Hales said.
"We've did a capacity study for the airfield when it was a 500-student capacity school, now it's a 250 capacity school, but even at a 500 capacity school the anticipated runaway usage still only used proportional available runway time.
"This doesn't hold any negative impacts in our ability to grow commercial and cargo services."
She said the airport would have to employ some extra staff because of the facility.
"We will employ some additional staff to provide services like refuelling and air services to the academy, however the biggest employment impact will be in the academy itself."
Ms Hales said the facility helped establish Wellcamp as a centre for excellence in aviation education.
"That is something we really aspire too," Ms Hales said.
"There are a lot of other opportunities for education in the aviation space, such as the training of flight attendants, engineering, ground staff, security staff, all sorts of aviation people and that's certainly a space we want to play in."
Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said he did not think the school would generate enough traffic for Qantas to introduce more commercial routes to Wellcamp.
"We already have 12 flights a week... we think this airport has huge growth potential," Mr Joyce said.
"We were the first airline here so if the economics work, that will grow."
Academy to help with shortage
QANTAS CEO Alan Joyce says the new pilot academy in Toowoomba will address a global pilot shortage.
"We will not need 500 pilots a year for Qantas, so a significant amount of them will be for other airlines and overseas training," Mr Joyce said.
"In the last two years, between 2016 and 2018, we've recruited 850 new pilots for Qantas, mainly because of the 787 coming in and the extra flying we have internationally.
"Over the next decade Qantas may be taking aircraft for project sunrise, to fly aircraft direct from Sydney and Melbourne to London and New York, that will mean a lot of pilots in those year.
"Some years we may take all of them, some we may take very little of them, it will depend on what the demand is for them during that period."
"This is a great opportunity for Australia and we're making it a business opportunity as well."
Mr Joyce said 790,000 new pilots were needed across the globe in the next 20 years. He said because of that, the facility would welcome students from all around the world.
"Toowoomba will be attractive to people close to Brisbane and attractive to people from overseas because of the location," he said.
"Some of the other sites may attract different people for different reasons."
He said it would be a number of years before the program became profitable for Qantas.
"The first few years is an investment, it won't be until a few years into the program (it becomes profitable)," he said.
"There is a cost to the training that will be paid for by the student. It may be paid for by an airline if the airline sponsors a student, so it'll be various combinations of different ways of doing it."
Mr Joyce said the pilot shortage was not impacting Qantas.
"We are at the top of the food chain, when we advertised recently for 170 pilots we had over 1000 applicants," he said.
Originally published as Why 'the best airport has won' the Qantas Pilot Academy
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