BALPA: Pilot praise for A380 crew - and a warning
04-Nov-2010 The British Airline Pilots' Association (BALPA) today hailed the professionalism of the pilots of the Quantas A380 which had an emergency landing in Singapore.
'It is the professionalism of airline pilots that has made air travel the safest travel in the world,' said Captain Mark Searle, BALPA Chairman.
'We see this level of professionalism time after time, whether it be the emergency landing of the British Airways 777 at Heathrow Airport or the safe landing of the airliner on the Hudson River in the USA.
'It is essential we have a steady stream of new professional pilots and Boeing has estimated we shall need 448,000 in the next 20 years, but warns we are going to be woefully short.
'In the UK pilot training schools are reporting that they are 25 per cent down in new trainee pilots in both the last two years because the enormous cost of training - £100,000 initially and then up to £35,000 for flying specific aircrfaft - has to be met by the new recruits. And young people and their parents today just cannot find that kind of money.
'The airlines have got to pay for, or at least contribute to, the cost of training as they used to. And Government has got to stop discriminating against young students who want to be pilots. They pay nothing for their training, while they subsidise the training of architects, lawyers and others at university.
'Tomorrow's air passengers need to be assured that they too will have skilled, fully trained, professional pilots like those in the news today.'