Originally Posted by
LexAir
Recently I was conversing with a senior instructor at a major GA school and that person was ebullient about how busy the school is, which is great for now. But nobody seems to be talking about the elephant in the room: What is going to happen to the GA training industry in Australia after the current batch of international airline cadets, being trained at the major schools, graduate?
After the current trainees have graduated and with the international borders still closed, how are the major schools going to survive until the borders reopen?
When the borders reopen, will the Chinese, in particular, still send us students or is the geopolitical situation going to work against us?
I personally think that the major GA schools will survive until the borders re-open regardless of what China may or may not do once the international borders re-open. I would even go as far as to make an educated guess that China would still send students to us once the borders reopen because the geopolitical situation is not as bad as everyone makes it out to be.
By the time borders reopen enough time will have passed for them to send students here should they choose to. Even if the worse case scenario happened and they stopped sending Chinese pilots to Australia for flight training I am sure that it would still not spell the end of the big schools.
There will always be plenty of aspiring pilots in Australia wanting to learn to fly.