KUA HOPE FOR MORE PILOTS

Air Niugini and the Sinasina Yongomugl District in Chimbu province have entered into an agreement to train young people to become pilots.

Local M-P, Kerenga Kua and Air Niugini Chief Executive Officer Simon Foo signed a joint agreement to train two young men from his electorate to undergo the Air Niugini Cadet Pilot program every two years.

Mr Kua also presented the first 200- thousand kina to Air Niugini for the training of the first two young cadets.

Mr Kua said his district is known for producing some of the best human resources for the country, however, its still their dream to produce more pilots, as currently, Sinesine Youngomugl District have only two sons serving in the aviation industry.

"For my district, we produce alot of manpower for the development of this country from plantations all the way up to Departmental heads and some of them are even scientists. So we cover the whole field and when I have a look at it I realised we lack a proper representation at the aviation industry. Right now, we have only two airline pilots. One is Captain Kora Wemin, he's with Air Niugini and Captain Paul Kuipa is in PNG Airlines. That's only two and I believe that;'s not enough and we as a district would need to at bringing more young people in that particular field so that there is a fair representation."

The joint arrangement is open to any tertiary and grade 12 student form Sinesine Youngomugl whose biological father or mother come from the electorate, and have lived in the electorate long enough to regard themselves as being from Sinesine Youngomugl.

Application for this training would be out in the daily papers soon for young people from Sinesine Younomulg to apply

Air Niugini Chief Executive Officer Simon Foo said, its great initiative and a great contribution towards building PNG national pilots.

Mr Foo said the funding for this training will be jointly shared by the local member and Air Niugini unlike before, where Air Niugini was fully responsible in funding the training.

To train one student in the pilot cadet training would cost about one hundred thousand kina a year.

Mr Foo said the airline has been involved in the Cadet Pilot training since 1988, and up to 2013, Air Niugini has produced a total of over 80 national pilots under this scheme.

Of the total 5 of them are female pilots and all are currently progressing well in their career after graduating from the flying school.

Foo adds graduates from this scheme have progressed in their flying career, operating on the various aircraft types in the Air Niugini fleet, ranging from Dash 8 to B 767.

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