Tourism & Hospitality | Wednesday 22 May, 2019 4:33 am |

The Saudi Arabian Airlines has completed the procedures for the final admission phase for dispatching 400 applicants for the Aviators’ program in both its branches — commercial aviation and aviation sciences.

The final phase includes medical and physical fitness tests related to aviation, and comes after initial admission tests that qualified them for the third phase of the program. The latest dispatch is the largest since the program kicked off two years ago.

Under the umbrella of this program, 476 students are receiving their first and second phase of the training program at top US universities. 254 trainees have successfully completed the theoretical phase and have returned to the Kingdom to do the final training phase in the Prince Sultan Aviation Academy in Jeddah.

In addition, the airlines graduated 159 new aviators, 94 of them at their own expense, before the program kicked off. During the first quarter of this year, 52 pilots and assistant pilots joined the Saudi Arabian Airlines crew after completing their training. A total of 527 new pilots and assistant pilots were trained over the past three years.

Saleh bin Nasser Al-Jasser, director general of the airlines, said the training program is accepting larger numbers due to the increasing need to recruit pilots to its expanding fleet.