N.A.C. marketing its know-how around Pacific

Press, 22 February 1977, Page 17

N.A.C. marketing its know-how around Pacific

By

GARRY ARTHUR

N.A.C. is spreading its wings. To such everyday stops as Timaru, Wellington, and Dunedin, the internal airline has added exotic overseas destinations like Hong Kong, Kuaia Lumpur, Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York.

But it’s all in the mind. N.A.C. will never fly to any of them. These overseas flights are all being taken in the imaginations of foreign pilots sitting at the controls of N.A.C.’s Boeing 737 simulator — part of an extremely profitable sideline which the corporation runs at the Leonard Isitt Aviation Centre, Harewood. Nigh t-time visual models of these overseas airports have been built up by technicians at N.A.C.’s Training Services Department, and a visiting pilot sitting in the simulator can do a realistic approach and landing at Hong Kong, for example, and actually watch the lights of the city and the airport as he brings the jet down.

The Boeing simulator is the only one in the South Pacific, and N.A.C. is recouping a useful part of the running expenses by training scores of pilots from all over the region. The simulator can be programmed for the pilot’s home airport and others to which he is likely to fly.

Pilots who come to N.A.C. to use the simulator are men whom their airlines want to convert to Boeing 737 capability. They do exactly the same flight conversion that N.A.C. pilots do when they work their way up from Fokker Friendships to 7375. Since the simulator was installed, hundreds of pilots have been “converted,” including fliers from India, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Papua New Guinea, Nauru, Fiji, and even Canada. They have kept the simulator working up to 22 hours a day. Selling know-how is proving a lucrative activity for N.A.C.’s fledgling

Training Services Department — brought together as one unit less than a year ago. Last year the ' raining department earned $250,000 in fees from teaching all sorts of skills to outsiders, ranging from flying jets to driving fork-lift trucks. This was five times more than it earned the year before. This year it expects to do even better, and it will be no accident if it does. Far from merely providng training when asked to do so, N.A.C. is actively marketing its training facilities, both in New Zealand and in the South Pacific region. The latest move is a completely new course in basic pilot training especially for overseas trainees. N.A.C. has never given basic flying training before; its own recruits are all licensed pilots who have been taught to fly by the Air Force, the flying clubs, or elsewhere in the aviation industry.

The new basic flying course is being launched

as a Foreign Aid project of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Beginning in July, 10 Indonesian trainee pilots will be trained up to the standard where they can fly Twin Otter aircraft. Another 10 will begin training next year. But it will not end there. “Ultimately,” says Ken Jones, the chief ground instructor, “we’d like to deal in multiple courses of 15. We can compete with the best flying schools in the United

Kingdom on both price and quality. There’s no reason why all trainees from South-East Asia and the Pacific can’t come here instead of going to the United Kingdom.” “Ab Initio” flying training, as the new course is called, will begin on a contract basis with the flying clubs. N.A.C.’s high reputation has been a considerable factor in selling its train-

ing services. It trains engineers for the Ministry of Transport, and for the Fijian airline Air Pacific, Papua New Guinea’s Air Niugini, and Hong Kong. Other engineers are taught for the Aviation Industry Training Board, and apprentice block courses in general aviation aircraft engineering are done for the Education Department. Previously, N.A.C.’s training efforts were fragmented and located at a number of different places.

A study was called for in 1973, and it was found that training was costing a whopping SI.6M a year. “We wanted to make sure that we were doing the right amount of training,” says Mr Davidson, manager of the Training Services Department, “and that we didn’t overspend. At the same time we didn’t want to fall behind on the training needs of our people.”

As a result, six other aspects of training were brought together with pilot training at Harewood — hostess training, engineering training, flight operations ground training, management and busin e s s administration, safety, and commercial and other airline training. Ground safety training is also a relatively new section, developed because of concern about the high cost of accidents. Aircraft purchase and operating costs run into millions of dollars these days, and a tarmac accident that costs only about $250 to repair can involve indirect costs of thousands more when another aircraft has to be chartered, crews changed, and the damaged aircraft flown at low altitude to the repair shop. Noel Kinzett, the ground safety training officer, says that the ratio of the cost of actual damage to real loss is about one to six.

Last year, N.A.C., paid $230,000 as its contribution to the Accident Com-

pulsation Commission. It hopes to bring its accident toll down so far that it can press tor a rebate.

Here, too, progress is being made in marketing the corporation’s special knowledge. Fork-lift trucks, the main tool of airport ground staff, are expensive vehicles — about $24,000 — and notoriously unstable. The men who throw them around with such panache have to know many special techniques if they are to avoid costly damage and injuries.

N.A.C.’s hostesses are a by-word, it seems, for charm and efficiency. Hostess training is done at Harewood, and has attracted trainees from Fiji, Brunei, and the Royal New Zealand Air Force. The Railways Department and Wellington Hospital Board have also sent girls to the hostess school for

training in customer and staff relations. If their selection stan-

dards are as rigorous as

N.A.C.’s, they will be the top 10 per cent of girls who applied for their jobs. Judy March, the hostess training superintendent, says N.A.C., deliberately shies away from glamour girls. The qualities it seeks in a hostess are naturalness and capability. Girls who have worked with the public — at anything from teaching to banking — or who have shown initiative in some way, have the best chance of being chosen.

A measure of the improved conditions and greater job satisfaction of hostesses these days is seen in the fact that the average length of employment for hostesses has risen from 18 months to four years. Just as in the case of pilot and engineer training, the teaching of hostesses for other organisations is in line with the Training Services Department’s deliberate policy of selling its services to help earn revenue for N.A.C.