Flying high

It is a long haul before a Chinese pilot can get the prime position in the cockpit of a passenger plane

When you travel by air, you often see pilots in uniform rushing into and out of airport terminals. But becoming a pilot is costly and involves a lot of training. In China, 90 percent of the country's airline pilots are trained at the same school. It's the world's largest civil aviation institution - the Civil Aviation Flight University of China. After graduation, pilots must first become familiar with Airbus and Boeing planes before they can work as co-pilots. If they want to become captains, it takes longer. For example, for Air China, a pilot needs to have had more than 3,000 hours of flight time to fly a Boeing 737. For a Boeing 767 it's 4,000 hours. After four years of school, a pilot needs at least five years of flying, during which period there is more training, strict assessment and a brutal elimination process.

China Daily

(China Daily Africa Weekly 09/22/2017 page4)