Business
Bristow Helicopters To Spend N720m On Pilots Training
The Managing Director, Bristow Helicopters, Capt. Akin Oni, last Thursday said that the company would spend $4.8 million (about N720 million) on the training of its pilots in 2013.
Oni told newsmen in Lagos recently that the company would expend the sum of $300, 000 (about N4.5 million) on each of the 16 pilots to be trained during the period.
According to him, the training of pilots, engineers and other technical personnel, is a yearly exercise by the company.
He said that the pilots would be trained at International Aviation College, Ilorin, Kwara.
Oni said that the candidates were picked from 2,000 applicants and the training would last for eight weeks.
He explained that after the initial training at Ilorin, the trainees would go for further training at Bristow Academy, Florida, United States of America.
“The purpose of the training is to correct expatriates quota in the aviation sector, hoping that in the next couple of years, the helicopter company will fully be taken over by indigenous people,” he said.
He stated that the Florida training would be for 12 months, where trainees would be fully exposed to pilot training.
“The purpose of this training by our company is for us to contribute our quota to the Nigerian policy on reduction of expatriate pilots.
“We have been doing this for many years and we will continue to do this until the whole company is taken over by Nigerians.
“In 2002, we trained 20 pilots and in the last five years, we’ve trained 70 pilots and we have been doing this training for the past 25 years,” he said.
He said that over 70 per cent of the helicopter pilots working in the country were products of the company.
Oni said that the company was presently training 12 engineering cadets at the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology (NCAT), Zaria, Kaduna State.
According to him, plans are also underway to train another batch of 20 engineering cadets at the same college, bringing the total number of cadet engineers to 32 for 2013.
He noted that the company was partnering NCAT to renovate its two classrooms and also sending its helicopters to the school for training.
Oni also said that Bristow was training four instructors from the college in the United Kingdom.