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Vietnam’s only privately-owned airline Vietjet will join Airbus to open a pilot training center in Ho Chi Minh City to meet the rapidly growing demand for cockpit crew in the country
The move is expected to meet the low-cost carrier’s demand for qualified professionals to man its cockpits and promote aeronautical and aviation technology, Vietjet said.
When fully operational, the 5.54 hectare (13.7-acre) facility at Saigon Hi-Tech Park will be the first training center of its kind in Vietnam.
The $170 million facility is scheduled take 12 months to build, starting from March this year.
Vietjet will work with civil aircraft manufacturer Airbus to operate full-flight simulators at the facility.
It remains unclear about the training capacity of the center under the Vietjet-Airbus venture.
Vietnamese airlines are dealing with what they believe to be a serious shortage of professional pilots.
“Vietnam’s airline market is growing rapidly, hence there’s a huge demand for a large number of qualified professionals at local airlines,” Lai Xuan Thanh, director general of the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam, said at a recent meeting of transport authorities.
Vietnam’s airline industry is growing at the third-fastest pace in the Asia-Pacific region with the number of air travelers in 2016 jumping by 29 percent from 2015 to about 52 million.
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