P-Noy may mobilize pilots from PAF to fly PAL airbuses

CLARK FREEPORT, Pampanga, Philippines – President Aquino can mobilize pilots from the Philippine Air Force (PAF) to temporarily fly Philippine Airlines’ (PAL) Airbus 320 but military pilots will have to undergo specialized training and acquire licenses before they could do this, according to a top military official.

“This possibility is all up to our commander-in-chief,” PAF spokesperson Lt. Col. Miguel Ernesto Ocol said in an interview.

Twenty-six PAL pilots, all assigned to Airbus 320s, have resigned and did not return to work despite warnings from management of legal actions for breach of contract.

Ocol stressed that deploying PAF pilots to fly Airbus 320s won’t be easy, although the military has “a good pool of pilots.”  

The situation at PAL has affected tourism and snagged foreign and domestic air travel. The PAL employees’ union said the resignations were in reaction to a plan by the airline to lay off thousands of employees and outsource their positions.

Sources from the aviation industry told The STAR that the PAL pilots started to consider other jobs even before they abandoned the flag carrier.

“The initial offer was from Air Vietnam, which offered $9,300 monthly salary. Then came an offer from a Hong Kong airline with $15,000 salary per month,” the source said.

Ocol said that while the PAF flying school graduates about 50 pilots every year, there is no fear of them being “pirated” by lucrative-paying commercial airlines because they sign an eight-year contract with the Air Force.

He could not immediately say how much the government spends to train one pilot, but he recalled that at the time he finished his training in 1994 the cost was about P2 million each.

Meanwhile, Ben Hur Gomez, owner of Omni Corp., one of the country’s top aviation schools, urged the Aquino administration to take advantage of the rising demand in China and India for aviation schools to train pilots for their growing aviation industries.

He said the Philippines’ location is ideal for Chinese and Indian student pilots, but cited the need to ensure the quality of local aviation schools that are under the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP).

A study made by Alteon, the training arm of Boeing Co., revealed that China will need 2,162 pilots yearly or 43,240 pilots by the year 2025, while India will need 12,000 pilots by 2025.

The Alteon study also revealed that Central and South America need 1,344 pilots per year, and that South America alone would need 27,000 pilots by 2025.

It also revealed that Europe will need an average of 3,747 pilots yearly, while the US and Canada would need 128,000 pilots by 2025.