Students want to finish pilot training without extra cost
The students, along with their parents and sponsors, are to mount a “Picket for Justice” outside the Dáil tomorrow.
Some 80 students, many of them Irish, at the Florida Institute of Technology saw their training cancelled abruptly last month following a dispute between the institute and the Waterford-based Pilot Training College.
Ahead of the protest, the newly formed Pilot Training College Action Group, which is mainly made up of parents, said Education Minister Ruairi Quinn should consider that their sons and daughters’ education “has been taken away overnight”.
“If this happened in any other third-level college in Ireland, there would be a massive protest by the students. The Pilot Training College cost at least 10 times the cost of any Irish third-level college,” they said.
“The vast majority of parents/trainee pilots took out massive loans to fund their education. The trainee pilots were extremely motivated and proud of their aspiring careers in this, an area of science and technology, which the Government says it is focusing on.”
The trainees have insisted that the Government has a responsibility to them as the training college was approved by the Irish Aviation Authority.
Last night, their parents and sponsors questioned why the situation had been allowed to develop when the aviation authority audited the Pilot Training College in October and gave them a clean bill of health for another year.
They claimed that under Joint Aviation Requirements flight crew licensing regulations, the aviation authority had to satisfy itself that flight training organisations “have sufficient funding available to conduct training to the approved standards”.
“We are asking the Government to ensure that each individual trainee pilot who was privately funded can finish their training without any additional cost,” they said.
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