Minister of Transport and Mining Hon. Robert Montague on Thursday presented the Aeronautical School of the West Indies (ASWI) with a certificate, designating the institution as an Approved Training Organisation (ATO).
This means that the institution is approved by the Jamaica Civil Aviation Authority (JCAA) to provide ground school training and flight training in Jamaica.
Minister Montague described the occasion as historic while pointing out that the last time an ATO certificate was handed over to an approved flight training school was in 2011.
He also said that flight training has not taken place in Jamaica since 2019.
“Today we are going to revive that. It is about the third step on our way to get back more Jamaicans to learn to fly and get their license here in Jamaica rather than overseas,” the Transport and Mining Minister said.
Minister Montague stated that there are approximately 3,500 Jamaicans attending flight schools in South Florida and pointed out that this heralds a new beginning for the availability of flight training in Jamaica.
Minister Montague congratulated and expressed gratitude to the two young entrepreneurs, Gari Tomlinson and Christopher Gooding who took the bold step of establishing the aviation training institution.
“We thank these strong, brave, young men who have passed all the standards and today are world class in Jamaica” he said.
The Minister also thanked the Director-General (DG) of the Jamaica Civil Aviation Authority (JCAA) Mr. Nari Williams-Singh for all the work that JCAA has done to get ASWI ready for certification.
“Without compromising on safety, we assisted them, we walked with them right through the process and this shows government-in-action without compromising our standards, and at the same time helping our investors to achieve world class standards” Minister Montague stated.
Mr. Williams-Singh said that the approval of ASWI as an ATO is significant.
“Since 2019, we have not had any school that has been conducting flight training. They have been doing ground school training but not flight training, so this really augurs very well for tapping into a market that’s there” the DG said.
He said the journey with ASWI was a learning experience for the Authority.
“We had to evolve our processes and procedures as well and working with the ASWI team has also been beneficial for us as to how we will be doing things moving forward,” he explained.
He said that Jamaica now has a unique opportunity to take a part of the aviation training market.
“We look at this as a launching pad for the revitalisation of the general aviation market. It’s a strategy that our Minister has been pushing and our successive boards at the Authority have been supporting this as well” the DG.
He congratulated the JCAA’s Flight Safety team that put in the extra work to complete the process.