Thaindian News

Beijing, Nov 29 (IANS) Having been hit by an acute shortage of pilots, China’s civil airlines are approaching university graduates through campus recruitment drive.

The step to massively recruit and train pilots has been taken in the wake of pilot shortages that have hindered Chinese airlines’ development, the Shanghai Daily reported.

One such campus recruitment campaign was launched Monday by Shanghai-based China Eastern Airlines at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University to recruit over 100 pilots from among graduates from local universities.

“The graduates will become the reserve force for the airline’s pilot team with an increasing number of passenger planes,” said a human resource official of China Eastern surnamed Ding.

Domestic civil airlines usually recruit pilots from the seven professional flight academies across the country, including the Civil Aviation Flight University of China, the country’s major training facility in Sichuan province that provides 90 percent of civil airline pilots.

The consistent rise in passenger planes in China has led to demand for pilots far beyond what the academies can supply.

China’s domestic airlines will require about 3,000 new pilots every year, while training schools in the country can supply only 2,000 annually, say analysts.

China Eastern wants to recruit 500 pilots, half of them coming from the universities, he said.

The pilot shortage turned more acute after the Chinese civil aviation authority tightened recruitment of foreign pilots after a South Korean pilot refused to give way to a jet running low on fuel over Shanghai in August.