China's helicopter surge will offer training opportunities for Australia

A tourist involved in a traffic accident whilst travelling in China may be surprised to find a helicopter aeromedical system does not yet exist in the world's second largest economy. China has no effective helicopter industry to foster helicopter SAR and HEMS development.

By way of comparison Australia has 14,390 aircraft of which 1880 are helicopters (13 per cent, while New Zealand with 6400 aircraft has 791 helicopters (12 per cent). 

China has only 130 helicopters when its population size suggests it should have 48,000 helicopters.

The Chinese helicopter industry has been restricted in the past by the difficulties in obtaining permission to use military airspace.

But help is on the way, albeit slowly. In November last year China announced the decision to intensify the reform of China's low altitude airspace. The new policy coverers major cities including Changchun, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Lanzhou, Jinan and Nanjing. The low altitude airspace will gradually expand to cover the whole country by 2015.

Chinese business leaders agree the new policy represents a lucrative opportunity to exploit China's huge general aviation market potential. In particular, the opportunities to develop a SAR and HEMS industry with international help are enormous.

A keynote speaker at Australia's Rotor Tech 2006 stated that China has so few civilian helicopters that the concept of expanding its GA industry to include a large number of multi-engine IFR helicopters is really not achievable in the short term without extensive assistance from international logistic and training providers, such as those in Australia and New Zealand.

Sourcing and training of Chinese general aviation managers, pilots, aircrew, engineers and educators will create challengers for several decades. It may well be that the Chinese would need to train 7200 helicopter pilots over the next two decades.

The puzzle facing experts is how to assess the real figure when China only has 130 helicopters and very few flying schools at present. If these figures are in any way relevant, then they would need to graduate about seven pilots every week for twenty years, which is equivalent to more than 1000 training hours per week.

And this figure does not cover routine type ratings, role equipment endorsements, check and training, instructor qualifications and instrument ratings, etc.

Australia and New Zealand are in a good position to offer elementary training of pilots and aircrew using the resources of 30 training facilities in Australia
and 15 in New Zealand.

All countries will need to provide special courses due to the fact the existing commercial syllabuses do not meet Chinese licensing requirements. The Chinese
CPL requires some instrument and night flying. This has been a stumbling block for the Australian schools that do not need night training capability as the
CASA course excluded night training.

Those wishing to study opportunities in China would benefit from conferences being held in China. One important coming event is:

Air Medical & Rescue Congress China 2011 is being held 11–12 October 2011 in Shanghai. This inaugural SAR and HEMS conference is a good option for those interested in opportunities now being presented due to the release of low?level airspace.

For more information on this event, call +61 415 641 774 or email asiapacificaviationmarketing@gmail.com.