Gulf airlines face recruitment challenge to keep up with demand of growing fleet

CTC Wings which trains pilots in the UK and New Zealand and carries out pilot selection and type-rating training for many major airlines is also responsible for recruitment for low cost carrier flydubai. The company's executive director Captain Lee Westward tells Arabian Aerospace Radio today that the whole industry is facing challenges to recruit.

The growing orders for new aircraft from the Middle East area echo that of China where a huge backlog of aircraft from Boeing and Airbus will be entering the fleets over the next eight or nine years.

"Each aircraft equates to about ten or eleven pilots, You can see how it adds up," Capt Westward said.

Fydubai's recruitment drive for more first officers and captains to join the fleet will see CTC travel as far as South America to find the right qualified pilots.

Meanwhile airlines such as Emirates, Etihad, and Gulf Air have regenerated cadet schemes to bring nationals through the ab-initio stages and onto full commercial pilot's licences with a clear intent to create essentioal high value careers for the national citizens.

In many parts of the world potential pilots are thwarted in their plans to get commercial training because of the high costs (around $120,000) with few carriers offering sponsored cadet places. Westward beleives this should change with airlines perhaps offering to guarantee the loans while the students work for the airline. "We have also seen the position in places like Hong Kong where the airline has dropped its requirement on only sponsoring nationals," he said,

The interview can be heard on the podcast channel of the Arabian Aerospace website.

It is not just the flight crew requirement that is creating employment demands - the large number of A380s planned for Emirates is also putting a strain on the airline's recruitment team.

Emirates is hiring thousands of additional staff in a search that is spreading across six continents.

The Dubai airline says that for each A380 that enters its fleet it needs 20 pilots and 133 cabin crew, 

In a statement at the weekend Emirates said it expects to hire about 4,000 cabin attendants.

Emirates' cabin crew workforce comprises 131 nationalities, speaking more than 80 different languages. The airline has 152 aircraft in its fleet. A total of 200 planes are on order.