Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority (ECAA) said it has launched its first ‘Flight Procedural Design Training’ (FPD).
According to ECAA, the FPD is the first self-designed and prepared type of training ever provided in Africa. The training, which will be supported by practical sessions, would enable trainees to design new Air Routes for the air transport service.
Col. Wossenyeleh Hunegnaw, ECAA Director General, expressed his admiration and gratitude to organizers of the training, who toiled a great deal from preparing the course design and manual to actually launching the training.
According to the Director General, with the exception of the African Flight Procedural Program (AFPP) in the West Africa, which renders this type training through outsourcing the task, there is no other Civil Aviation organization in continent which has ever handled the task all by its own staffs.
According to Col. Wossenyeleh, ECAA is working to upgrade the training Center into an academy with a boarding school after the completion of the building being erected in its compound, many more courses will be provided locally in order to save the exorbitant foreign training costs the country incurs in hard currency.
Mengistu Nigussie, ECAA Air Space Management Director, notes that PPD training in Singapore, for instance, costs 18 thousand dollars per person, which is too costly to afford for a poor nation like Ethiopia.
“I was trained first and decided to prepare the manual with another colleague bidding to transfer the knowledge I acquired to the coming generation who can take over the duty of air route design. These eight employees, who are drawn from ATC, Aerodrome and Air navigation Regulation Directorates, will be able to design their own Air routes for the air transport service at the end of the training program,” Mr. Mengistu concluded.