Aviation center offers pilot training for free
By T. Sima Gunawan
TANGERANG, West Java (JP): Who says it costs a lot of money to become a pilot? Not the prestigious flying school here, which seeks to break new ground through their subsidized programs at the Curug Aviation Training Center (CATC).
Under the management of the Ministry of Transportation, the CATC offers free education for those who pass all enrollment tests.
"Not only do the students not have to pay, they even get a monthly allowance, though it is not much," I Dewa Putu Suma, director of the training center, told The Jakarta Post yesterday.
High school graduates interested in CATC have to take a series of difficult tests, including an aptitude test.
Established in 1952, CATC's drop-out rate was once as high as 50 percent. Since requiring the aptitude test in 1975, however, the drop-out rate has plummeted to between 10 and 20 percent, according to Suma.
The number of students who enroll at CATC is increasing.
Santo Budiono, head of the Education and Training Agency of the Transportation Ministry, said there were almost 19,000 high school students who took the enrollment tests this year compared to 11,250 students in the previous year. The school generally accept between 300 to 400 new students each year, who then learn how to become pilots, technicians, mechanics and air traffic controllers.
In the past it admitted 60 new students to the flying section. But starting next January, the school will accept 120 students, due to today's high demand for pilots.
Budiono said that Indonesia would need 1,180 new pilots within the next five years. The country's existing five flying schools, the CATC, Juanda, Aviando, Deriya, and Sarana Flying Club, still produce fewer than 100 graduates yearly.
"Next year the Curug Aviation Training Center will improve its status as an aviation institute," Budiono said.
They will add 46 new single engine aircraft, seven double engine aircraft and five advanced turbo prop aircraft to the school's collection, which also owns 24 single engine aircrafts and three twin engine aircrafts at present.
"We will be the only flying school with the advanced turbo prop aircraft," Budiono said.
The prospective pilots will also have to study longer, from 18 months now to two years, Suma said.
The government has allocated Rp 61 million in educational money for pilots and between Rp 10 to 11 million for students of other disciplines.
"If they want to work for a private airliner once they graduate, the company has to return their training costs," Suma said.
So far the school has produced 1,445 pilots, including four women.
Denying any discrimination against women, he said that the school has exactly the same enrollment requirements for both men and women.
According to the school, there are so few female graduates because the number of women registering in the school is also small.
Foreigners
Yesterday, Budiono closed an eight-week advanced course on airworthiness, which was held under the program of Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries (TCDC) meeting in Karachi in 1992.
Thirteen participants from Uganda, Maldives, Suriname, China, Iran and Indonesia took part in the course.
Suma said that since 1979 CATC had graduated 213 people through 12 advanced courses for participants from 19 developing countries in the Asia- Pacific region.
Before the Karachi meeting, CATC held the courses on the subjects of airworthiness, avionic, gas turbine and helicopter maintenance in cooperation with United Nations Development Program (UNDP), which provided financial assistance to the participants. UNDP later stopped funding the program, but it continued as the participating countries agreed to allocate funds for the courses as declared in their 1992 meeting.