SIA training center: Breeding able flight crew

Preparing able flight and cabin crew is an important factor for modern airlines to ensure not only the comfort of their passengers, but also their safety. The Jakarta Post’s Alvin Darlanika Soedarjo, along with 18 journalists from both Indonesia and Singapore, recently participated in an aviation workshop held by Singapore Airlines (SIA).
The airplane makes an emergency landing, flight attendants calmly direct passengers to safety while others tend to the injured.
Fear not — this is just a simulation held at a training facility where new and veteran air crew hone and refresh their skills on air transport safety.
But wait until you visit the water evacuation pool, where an aircraft simulates making a ditch-landing. The pool can create waves simulating open-water realism.
Most major airlines have their own training centers, such as the Singapore Airlines Training Centre (STC), which was opened officially in January 1993.
The S$80 million training center aims to suppress potential in-flight errors by holding continuous training exercises and courses.
“We regard safety as an essential part of all our operations. Singapore Airlines maintains and adopts practices that promote the safety our customers and staff,” assistant manager of public affairs S. Supramaniam told The Jakarta Post.
The airline used to have separate training facilities for different kinds of training; the centralized facility is aimed to establish inter-departmental communication.
Training is provided through specific courses, such as in language and counseling, and food service. However, culinary training sessions are still held at another SIA facility.
On average, more than 300 people attend various courses daily at the STC. In the fiscal year 2005-06, the company spent S$103.3 million on training alone. Both newcomers and seasoned crew are present there on a daily basis.
Besides new recruits, the airline obliges its senior cabin crew to refresh their safety and emergency skills each year. They take a two-day training session at STC and must pass the associated exam in order to keep serving passengers in the air.
Practical training includes practicing CPR on specially designed dummies and using fire extinguishers in a purpose-built training room.
A partial mock-sized cabin of an Airbus 340-300 for water evacuation training is mounted above a huge square pool; trainees use emergency slide rafts to evacuate “passengers” through several doors of the jet.
Emergency drills are simulated with the pool’s pitch and roll capability, and various scenarios are created for a mock ground evacuation.
Both male and female crews wear casual attire while training, including the iconic Singapore Girls, who are known among air travelers for their body-hugging kebaya uniforms.
The flight attendants face tough recruitment competition and must pass a strict selection process before donning the uniform. SIA receives about 1,000 applicants every year, and only accepts 60 to 80 people.
The lucky ones undergo a 15-week training period with courses ranging from people management and problem solving to food and beverage, and first aid safety.
“About 90 percent of all Singapore Girls are either Singaporean or Malaysian. The others hail from China, India, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Indonesia. They represent countries from which most of their passengers’ originate,” said public affairs supervisor C.H. Heng.
“We’d like our cabin crew to speak the natural languages of our regular passengers,” Heng added.
As of June 2007, the SIA cabin crew consists of 6,000 people.
For pilots, the STC has several types of airplane simulators such as the Boeing 747, Boeing 777 and Airbus A340 that make up the airline’s fleet.
Adding a new type of aircraft to the fleet means pilots must undergo rigorous training yet again.
For example, the carrier has trained about 40 pilots to fly the Airbus A380 double-decker aircraft. These pilots have been training with the French Thales flight simulator since June.
“The simulators run 24 hours a day, even on weekends and public holidays,” said Supramaniam.
20/08/07 Jakarta Post, Indonesia