Gander Flight Training School has been producing pilots for over twenty-five years and now it’s the destination for more and more international students.
The town in north-eastern Newfoundland was at the centre of aviation history.
Gander was the last stop for trans-Atlantic flights in the early days of aviation, and played a crucial role for re-fuelling during the Second World War.
Its significance was revived during the chaos of the terrorist attacks on New York City on September 11, 2001, when 38 aircraft made emergency landings and 6,700 people welcomed and accommodated.
This recent social history is the subject of the award-winning musical, “Come from Away”, but that’s not what’s drawing many international students to the school; it’s the weather!
“Training in Canada in the aviation industry, it’s almost like gold.”
The island that recently had winds so fierce they registered on the Richter Scale, is the ideal location to learn and practice everything one might encounter elsewhere in the world.
In an interview with the CBC’s Garrett Barry, current student Charles Onyango, explained the value-added achievement of training in Gander
“The moment you go in any kind of environment with other pilots and they hear that you trained from Newfoundland, light bulbs go off,” he said. “Training in Canada in the aviation industry, it’s almost like gold.”
Gander Flight Training classroom with Charles Onyango, left, and Kaokorn Jindarongs examining controls in a simulated Boeing aircraft. (Garrett Barry/CBC)
Onyango is a student from Kenya who was originally considering flight school in South Africa until friends convinced him Gander would be a better experience.
“As we in the industry say, it’s not a sunshine licence”
“We’ve also had people from Colombia, from Africa, from all over the place,” Florence White told Garrett Barry.
She owns the flight school and Exploits Valley Air Services with partner, Pat White.
There are students this year from Turkey, Morocco and India this year.
The group of students from Thailand are part of an exchange program with Rangsit University that was established in 2007.
Florence White describes some of the practical advantages of learning to fly in Gander.
“One simple thing is, for instance, cross-wind landings,” she told Barry. “They don’t even get to practise [in Thailand], hardly at all, whereas here it’s pretty well every day you’re factoring in.
“As we in the industry say, it’s not a sunshine licence. They’re getting to fly in real challenging conditions.”
Mohammed Fazal is from Kerala, a province in southern India. He’ll have his instructor rating in early 2019, and then be teaching others at the school.
The program generally takes two years to complete, but for some students there’s something more in the place and the people that is hard to resist.
“For instance, we have one of our engineers who is originally from India — just bought his first house in Gander, so he’s staying,” Florence White said. “When we hear that they’re entering into relationships, then we’re hoping they’re putting down some roots.”
(With files from CBC)
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