The main key issue student pilots at the Asian Academy of Aeronautics (AAA) facing is the massive delay in course completion due to which they are losing valuable time and money.
A pilot course that is supposed to take only 18 months for completion is taking more than 3-4 years and even more for some students.
To resolve the issue it is fairly simple for the flight school; all they need to do is to hire sufficient flight instructors to meet the student to instructor ratio and bring additional aircraft to meet the demand.
The number of student pilots enrolled in AAA has been increasing on yearly basis and there is no doubt the school would have clearly seen the rise in demand.
It was the school's failure to meet this demand that had let to the crisis the students are facing today.
It is quite surprising to see such slow effort made for expansion compared to the number of students getting enrolled at the school as this would in return benefit the school itself.
Is this mismanagement or is the school willingly not making any effort?
The flight school should not find difficulty in finding flight instructors as globally there are hundreds of qualified flight instructors jobless, especially from the western region.
Due to the rise in the number of pilots, it’s extremely difficult to get an airline pilot job in the western part of the world thus many pilots become flight instructors to build experience for themselves.
The second biggest issue is the lack of training aircraft in the facility. The school have failed to bring in additional aircraft after all these years.
There have been reports of aircraft been grounded for months for maintenances without replacement aircraft causing massive delays for the students.
There are further claims that poor maintenance played a roll in incidents involving the two aircraft; 8Q-GAC and 8Q-GAD. This a matter of serious concern as this could have easily become an accident that could prove to be fatal.
There are many further allegations against the school's management:
The students have alleged that the school intentionally delays training sessions so the students would ultimately require to fly additional hours thus paying additional money.
As student pilots, if they are not able to fly consecutively, it would only weaken their learning progress requiring more time to progress through the course. This means that the student would require additional flight instruction than stated in their course for which they would be required to pay additional money.
Normally flight schools in other parts of the world tend to push students to fly consecutively for the same reason.
The students further claim the school prioritizes foreign students providing them with a faster training path to finish them ahead.
There are also claims regarding some of the flight instructors who are unpleasant and does not treat students well nor provide a proper training environment.
A flight instructor plays a significant role in a student's progress and a difference between a good instructor and a bad instructor equals to that of a student who does well and finishes off fast to that of one that lags behind or fails.
National airline Maldivian has reported that the airline itself has the capacity to run a flight school. All airlines in the Maldives are authorized training organizations that carry out many different training programs and courses for pilots, cabin crews, engineers, and more. Many of the training programs are conducted by instructors from the Maldives.
It can be an excellent initiative by the national airline to be involved in establishing a flight school but this would be a long-term solution for the issues faced by the student's pilots today at AAA.
Relevant authorities must step in and hold AAA accountable for their failure and must hold relevant authorities responsible for their failure in regulating the flight academy all these years even after countless cries for help from the students. A fast solution must be provided.