New hope for stranded student pilots

By Xu Fan and Liu Baijia (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-10-13 09:24

More than 40 student pilots, who had their training suspended in Canada for five months and were forced to work illegally, may be transferred to a US aviation school.

Relatives of the students reached a preliminary agreement with Beijing-based Okair after tense negotiations yesterday.

"Finally, Okair will contract three aviation training schools in China, the US and Canada respectively to review the capabilities of my son in one or two weeks," a father, who only wanted to be identified as Mr Liu, told METRO yesterday.

Liu said students who passed the review would be able to continue training at a US aviation school and become Okair pilots once they finish training. Those who do not finish training will still be able to join Okair company as an employee.

Liu told METRO that since May 2007, Okair recruited more than 40 Chinese students and sent them to the Maylan aviation school, which is based in London, Ontario, Canada to do the training.

According to the contract between Okair, Maylan and the students, the students paid 300,000 yuan ($44,000) tuition fees of the total 600,000 yuan sum. Okair was contracted to pay the remaining half. But Maylan said Okair did not fulfill their part of in the contact and the classes we shut down.

"My son even quit his high-salary job as chief attendant at a Chinese airlines company to chase his dream of becoming a pilot," Liu said.

He said when his 27-year-old son arrived in Canada, he discovered the training program offered by Maylan was not as good as he expected and the management system of Maylan Aviation was "messy".

Since the training center stopped the course in December 2008, some students were forced to find illegal jobs in order to survive.

Living standards reached rock bottom recently, when eight students were forced to cram into a dormitory only designed for four people.

After negotiating with Okair and Maylan without success, almost 20 relatives of the students gathered in Beijing on Friday to push for talks.

Ms Kang, who is in charge of the Maylan's Beijing base, told the Beijing Times yesterday that Okair failed to pay for the training program and according to the contract the training programs were stopped.

Wang Zhaowei, an executive with Okair, told METRO that Okair will try to resolve the problem as soon as possible and let all qualified students become real pilots.

He promised families they would be involved in selecting the new training schools to ensure their children would have good training. Okair was the first private airlines in operation in the Chinese mainland in 2005.

But due to conflicts among shareholders, it was suspended from operation from Nov 14 to Jan 23 by the aviation authorities.

In August, more than 20 pilots of the companies decided to resign from the company because it already owed them 13 million yuan in social security insurance and housing deposits.