International Aviation College Nakhon Phanom University is taking off!
Our fleet of Diamond Diesel engine aircraft is arriving Twin engine is "Glass Cockpit". The 26 January, we will make a conference to present our vision of training and also the new technologies in sight... new fuels, next generation of aircraft...
We have also decided to reduced the Entry Level to "University Pre Entry Level" but with a check in Maths, Physics and English (instead of a Bachelor Degree). This will save time for the students (and money for their parents).
You are welcome to visit our facilities (Rajabat Nakhon Phanom- 26 Jan Afternoon)
Our website:
http://www.npu.ac.th/iac/

Anyone working here already?
I'd love to hear about what its like!

DC

With Thai people we are around 35 of which around 10 expats, number increasing quickly as some Flight Instructors are in the recruitment pipe line, and as we will have to train some Qatar Airways cadets in a very short while.
After Songkran, we will be also recruiting Cadets for Orient Thai/ One Two Go: we will have to train 28 students for them.
Expats are from various nationalities, British, French, NZ, US, India.
We have already 7 aircraft and 4 other will join before July. (Core fleet Diesel DIAMOND DA40 & 42)
Some Flying activity will start next week, we have gotten the final green light after months of struggling in paperwork....
We have also two simulators already operational and a FBS Airbus 320 is under construction and will be delivered this autumn.

More information on our website:
http://www.npu.ac.th/iac/

This post has been edited by Asian Frog: 2008-04-06 06:58:14

Very interesting, check out ayla aviation academy in Aqaba jordan, they have the same set up. more or less.
do you require technical people?

Answering to question:
But if I am well informed Ayla is leaving the JAR system (Too tough and is heading to the FAA licensing system) so some instructors disagree and are leaving Ayla. It seems there is a difference between the share holders on this issue...
Concerning the technical staff, we are recruiting actively some Flight Instructors. If you are an experienced Flight Instructor CFII in the FAA systeem or FI +IRI in the JAR system with 600 h as Instructor within 1500 hours of flight we are interested to recruit immediately. However, we will check your standard. Our mission is to build a reference Flight Training Organisation amidst the best worldwide, of International reputation. We are only recruiting professionals able to satisfy checks by various Civil Aviation Authorities as we train students of various countries, particularly our instructors must be able to train at European Standards (JAR in our language). No laxity in our selection procedure, no friends, you must be at or close to the Standard.

Concerning the Engineers we have a strong team of LAME (Licensed Aircraft Maintenance Engineer) former F16 engineers, retrained on our Diamond aircraft.
Concerning the ground Instructors, we are full and well staffed with a strong and experienced team, able to teach at JAR level, some trainers of trainers....
Next year we may begin to train engineers (JAR 66) and we may need some technical instructors. If you have the experience, the educational training for teaching with modern concepts and are highly IT literate, send your CV. But we will recruit professional with a serious aviation background and a proper training on educational methods.
Regards

not sure about your ayla information, but they do FAA as well, again i am not sure if previous to now they converted from JAR. as he Jordanian authority follows FAA standards, but recently i heard they are going for Jars not sure yet, but the airline did.

as for engineers, i am a licensed FAA A&P as well as JCAA A&P and Hold a PPL. I previously worked on A320,310,L1011,707,727Pa28,C172,C152,C182. also have read the diamond systems. currently working in quality department, for a private jet company, but did not do maintenance for quite a while, any chance ????

Send your CV to our CMO (Chief Maintenance Officer). He is the first level of screening.

Hey guys, newbie from Ban Kruat, Buriram here.

Can anyone provide an update on the progress at IAC NPU?

It would be much appreciated, thanks.

This post has been edited by onthelanding: 2008-07-29 21:11:30

from what I have read,this school has lot of problems (very bad management and lot of crap like high JAA standards,high quality, EU standards)and gives only THAI licenses.

5-6 instructors have already left the school.
they had 15-20 students but won't get more!
if they were so good, why so many complaints and people leaving?

check pprune.org to know more.(IAC NPU)

I won't spend my money there.

This post has been edited by thaistudent2000: 2008-08-18 13:49:36

Yes, we have sacked some farang flight instructors for various reasons. I understand the previous post as part of their reaction ...
No more comments

Fortunately, in Thailand when you 'sack' a government officer, certain detailed processes must be followed. I have heard that these processes were not followed, and as a result some of these ex-employees are commencing a group (civil) legal action against IAC for unfair dismissal. I also head a criminal case is being filed against the Principal of IAC for fraud, as although monies had been deducted from employees for Thai Social Security contributions, most of these monies were not paid to the Thai authorities. I wonder if IAC will have to 'borrow' more money from the nursing college in Nakhon Phanom to cover any costs of this legal action. Apparently, salaries were paid late yet again this month. Must be embarrasing for some people there having had 4 Multi-Engine aircraft on the ground, not earning revenue for the past 6 months (except for 1 course of 20 hours flying a few months ago). Just as well they have a token farang manager there; should help the other (Thai) management to save face when the sh1t hits the fan!
As regards Thaistudent2000's comments, looks like the editor at the Bangkok Post agrees with the comments he made about 'bad management' :bkk post
Also more information on IAC here :pprune

To top it, the current course of Middle Eastern students look set to walk, as many students have been 'shook up' to say the least after being sent solo by their instructors in Thai monsoon weather conditions that were clearly unsuitable for student pilots. More recently I heard that this resulted in infringement of Laos airspace, as the students had entered cloud and became disorientated.
Lets hope they walk before something much more serious occurs......

This post has been edited by FarangFlyer: 2008-09-08 10:35:18

Reaction....(Continued) .

I hardly think the editor of the Bangkok Post can be categorised as ' reaction ' , unless of course he was sacked by IAC!
Simply stating facts, and providing various sources of reference links should allow everyone to form their own opinions.....

So I guess I should keep looking for a suitable flying school to get my PPL.

Froggs

I notice in the article in the Bangkok Post, it states that 'Students practise on Airbus A320 simulators, which are not available anywhere else in Thailand' and allocates 98 Million Baht of the budget having been used for the purchase of this simulator.

I have just spoken to some friends at IAC, and they have told me that there is no A320 simulator in Nakhon Phanom!

Additionally, the spending report allocates 15 million Baht for hangars. Again, no hangars have been built at Nakhon Phanom Airport!

It would appear that a certain amount of misuse of funds may have taken place here.

I wonder how long before any investigation reveals the truth of what has happened to the Thai tax payers money?

This post has been edited by FarangFlyer: 2008-09-08 16:35:39

Bangkok Post

School for pilots just fails to take off


by SIRIKUL BUNNAG

NAKHON PHANOM : Only three Thai students have enrolled for the first semester at the two-billion-baht International Aviation College _ an institution observers say is a prime example of politicians starting up self-serving projects...[more]

It takes time to launch and trim such an organisation. Currently we have not 3 but 8 Thai Students plus 15 Qatari Students (and 15 other Qatari Students stuck because of the political turmoil, awaiting the signature of the Transport Minister to join..) Our Flying school has started operation in June... Not so bad!!! And we are in advanced discussions with two Airlines for 2 batches in the next 3/4 Months (Confidentiality required as the discussions are not yet finalised).....The capacity of the school is currently 60 students and it should be reached in 2009.
The school i\s technically better located far from Bangkok and other training areas (Pattaya/ Korat = Military training). Bangkok = commercial activity. Only non professionals of Civil Aviation are thinking differently. It is true that Private students are most located in the area of Bangkok, but our real customers are not Private students but AIRLINES, and the quietness of Nakhon Phanom is ideal for studying ...
Plenty of craps in the infos, none a students has flown in Laos: we are under permanent control and contact with Sakhorn Nakhorn Control...
Training of pilot requires a constant policy and follow up: Due to unstability in training, utilisation of part time military pilot instructors does not give the best results.... More if the Military Pilots are extremely good in "General Handling" we may have some reserves in some other aspects, because Military and Civil pilots correspond to two different specialisations.

Why IAC? Not because of a local politician, but because some were complaining about the too low standards of training in Thailand.....That's an other reason which has been given to us when we have designed this school: I understand that the big gap in quality of training is creating some reactions....
We are also very demanding in our recruitment and some frustrations are developing.....

" The caravan is passing by and the dogs bark...."

And Pilot Training is a profitable industry (UK= more than 20 schools, USA, and close to us, Malaysia 7 schools and 1000 students, Australia)
Instead to be negative the question is:
how Thailand, ideally located between two huge markets (Namely India and China) can benefit of its location?
This a a non neglectible source of foreign currencies.....

"Mr Prasong conceded the new college had not won the trust of local and foreign carriers."
BP

This program should have been a success. There are plenty of students and instructors available.

I suggest you contact some of the aviators on this site to get you flying again.

'PROFITABLE INDUSTRY' ? Lets entertain that idea for a moment.....

Definition of profitable:
'Pure economic profit is the increase in wealth that an investor has from making an investment, taking into consideration all costs associated with that investment including the opportunity cost of capital. Accounting profit is the difference between price and the costs of bringing to market whatever it is that is accounted as an enterprise (whether by harvest, extraction, manufacture, or purchase) in terms of the component costs of delivered goods and/or services and any operating or other expenses.'

So, in accordance with the expenses report as shown in the Bangkok Post, IAC has invested 1,205,100,000 Baht in their business. That figure does not include salary costs, fuel costs, aircraft maintenance costs, airport fees etc etc.

Therefore, at 2.3 million Baht per person, per course, it would require approximately 524 students to take up the course just to recover the initial investment. To put that in another way, based on your plan of 60 students per year, it will take approximately 9 years to recover the initial investment!
As I said this calculation does not take into account a number of IACs operating costs like salaries, aircraft maintenance, student accommodation and food etc (and depreciation of assets, which at the moment are very high given the bankruptcy of Theilert, the aircraft engine manufacturer). So a more realistic forecast would be approximately 12-15 years to recover this investment! And then profit? hmmmm......Since the average life expectancy in terms of operational efficiency for a training aircraft is on average 20 years, I DON'T THINK SO!

That does not sound like a profitable (industry) proposition to me, and I certainly would not invest in IAC from a business perspective!

I am amazed that these figures were not taken into account at the planning stages. Perhaps then tax payers money could have been put to better use.

You also mention that IAC is ideally located between two large markets: India and China, yet you do not claim to have any students from either of these countries. I agree that China is a large market, however most of their training is done within China, and the remainder is sub-contracted to various flight training organisations in Australia (a fact that the Bangkok Post article supports). As regards India, the aviation market there is entering recession; Non-Indian National Pilots are being made redundant, and Indian Nationals are having their working rosters reduced, as aircraft are being grounded, and routes cancelled due to soaring fuel costs in India. Previous to the recession, most Indian carriers already had active training agreements mainly with USA based flight training organisations (and some Australia based).

Sorry to steal your thunder old chap, but making statements without basing them on hard fact and evidence has to be hitting the Thai tax payer hard.

This post has been edited by FarangFlyer: 2008-09-08 23:02:07

I do not know where Bangkok Post has found its figures but they are fully wrong and do not correspond to real investments far from those figures. Please telll to Bangkok Post to check its source....

Concerning the Chinese Market, Training inside China is not working well due to weather, pollution and ATC.... Chinese have a deficit of 1000/1500 Pilots per year
The Indian Market will rebounce: Civil Aviation is a cyclic industry. Oil Prices have cleaned some surcapacity and the aurvivors of the present oil price crisis will be in overheat soon: well known scenario.

Concerning the investments, tell to Bangkok Post to check its sources.... figures are fully wrong and have to be divided by 3 or 4.....
And we are only few months after the start of operations: Before making some rough assessments on the profitability and development of IAC, should you not wait at least one year of operation before?
About the A320 simulator, you are not well informed: the simulator is under preparation overseas and will be in our facilities in December. (As contracted and Planned and on time for the training)

Concerning the Flight instructors, at date, we are correctly staffed. We are very demanding and have rejected some candidacies: farang and Thais...So, some frustrations....

FarangFlyer, you seem very keen to destroy ....Have you some links with the sacked farang instructors?

This post has been edited by Asian Frog: 2008-09-09 06:32:18

One more point....

Local Carriers have inspected our set up and are generally very pleased, but it takes time to decide and also the current situation is not favourable. Each team has to report to its management, function of the expansion plan to decide about the recruitment and training. They have also current contracts to respect before switching to an other training institution: so it takes time....
And also, some opponents / competitors are actively lobbying against us in the Airlines boards; Farangflyer are you one of them? No, because they are not polemical, they use softer methods.
After reading your posts, taking into account some details, you can only be one of the sacked Farang Instructors....


This post has been edited by Asian Frog: 2008-09-09 07:30:49