Covid-19: Hamilton flying school set to close, Covid being blamed
Wednesday, 4 November 2020
It has been the training ground for thousands of pilots and airline staff but it looks like Hamilton’s aviation industry training school, L3 Airline Academy, will be permanently grounded early next year.
Staff at the business met on Wednesday morning, where they were informed the business’ parent company, L3 Harris, had proposed closing the Hamilton operation down in early February.
About 170 staff will lose their jobs as a result.
The company has begun a consultation process with those staff and will make a final decision on the fate of the business in about a month.
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As with many other businesses, the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have proved devastating for the aviation academy. Each year, the Hamilton Airport-based operation trained about 500 cadets, most of whom came from overseas.
It currently has 98 students who will all have completed their training in February and at that point the school will likely close.
In a letter delivered to staff on Wednesday, Alan Crawford, the president of commercial aviation solutions for L3 Harris, said it planned to consolidate its air training operations at sites in Britain and Portugal.
While the shift would allow the company to “align with industry demand”, Crawford hinted the pandemic was not the sole reason for the closure.
“The current travel restrictions, limiting new cadets from starting their training in Hamilton, has expedited the need for the proposed transition but is not the over-riding factor.
“I am personally very sorry that we are proposing to take this course of action. It is in no way a reflection of the team in Hamilton, who have consistently delivered world-class cadet training and experience.”
News of the closure of the company came as no surprise for Rex Stentiford, one of the instructors at the company who was being made redundant.
“Nobody was surprised. The moment the message came to us [on Tuesday] that there was to be an all-hands briefing, we knew that the axe was set to drop.”
However, he had one question that lingered.
“Why this site? Why not any of the others?”
The Hamilton branch of the company began life in 2005 as CTC Aviation, a branch of a British-based company with the aim of training pilots for the then-burgeoning European market. The business was opened with much fanfare by then-prime minister Helen Clark. By 2013 it was a base for 45 planes, 100 staff and 70 instructors.
In 2015, the company teamed up with Waikato University to develop joint pilot training programmes and, in 2017, its ownership changed to American-owned firm L3 Harris.
Until the Covid pandemic hit, the business was seen as a vital component of the airline industry, helping address a worldwide shortage of pilots.
The airlines it provided staff to included British Airways, Dragonair, the Jetstar Group, Monarch Airlines, Oman Air, Qatar Airways, Royal Brunei Airlines, Ryanair, Thomas Cook Airlines and Virgin Atlantic Airways.
In 2018, then-New Zealand academy director Peter Stockwell told Stuff he believed New Zealand had the capacity to take a larger share of the international pilot training pie.
“It is effectively an export business.”
Director of the L3 Airline Academy in Hamilton, Richard Bennenbroek, referred Stuff inquiries to the company’s international communications department.
The company was yet to respond at 5pm on Wednesday.