MANILA—An aviation industry start-up inaugurated Friday its aviation-training facility and their state-of-the-art Six degrees of freedom (6DoF) Full Motion Simulator from the United States, the first in Asia and the Philippines.
Precision Flight Control Philippines Inc. is a training facility that offers space rentals and equipment usage for the growing aviation training organization.
Present in the launch was Emirates Capt. Franklyn Desiderio, the first Filipino pilot to fly the Airbus A380, the worlds largest passenger airliner that can comfortably accommodate 544 passengers in three class configuration.
In an interview, Desiderio encouraged student pilots to persevere in their studies and jumpstart their careers in the Philippines. He said that Filipino pilots and other aviation professionals have come a long way adding that a lot of them are now based in foreign assignments working for the world’s big-name airlines.
Wilson Agbayani, Precision’s president and CEO, said that they expect a big number of student pilots to want to traind on their 6DoF simulator that can handle training lessons for Cessna 172, Baron 58, Citation 500/550, King Air 200 and Caravan jet type of aircrafts.
Training cost is competitive at US$100 per hour as compared to foreign counterparts.
“We are expecting more applicants like students from India, Papua New Guinea, Korea and from some Asian countries because our rates are much cheaper as compared to other countries.” said Agbayani.
He added that foreign student pilots preferred to be trained in our country because of our weather and aerodrome restrictions where there are enough space to fly as compared to other foreign countries.
Records from the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines said that certified pilots are categorized under four categories: these includes Student Pilot license, Private Pilot License, Commercial Pilot License, and Airline Transport Pilot License, the highest-level pilot license that allows the license holder to fly professionally as a pilot in command of multi-crew aircraft with any commercial airline company.
The minimum flying hours requirement for Private Pilot License (PPL) is 40, Commercial Pilot License (CPL) is 150 while Airline Transport Pilot License (ATPL) is 1,500 flying hours.