FIJI Airways marked yet another milestone with the ground-breaking ceremony for its $90 million Fiji Aviation Academy in Namaka, Nadi, yesterday.

Managing director and CEO Andre Viljoen said once completed, the facility would house the region’s most modern flight simulators, a state-of-the-art aviation school and top notch cabin crew training centre.

“This facility will be the first in the Pacific — and that includes Australia and New Zealand — with a full flight simulator for the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft,” he said.

“It will also include a full flight simulator for the Airbus A330.”

The completion of phase one of the project by March 2019 will see the opening of the first Airbus flight simulator training facility in the Asia-Pacific region outside of Australia, Hawaii and Singapore.

“This is indeed a bold step by Fiji Airways and the Fijian Government to create a world-class aviation academy right here in Namaka, Nadi.”

Chief guest at the event, Attorney-General and Minister Responsible for Civil Aviation, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, said the academy had long been a vision of Government.

“Through the groundbreaking ceremony today (yesterday), we will have in about 18 months time the Fiji Aviation Academy,” Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said.

“And this goes towards thinking laterally and outside the box.

“It is also being able to understand that if we in Fiji are to progress economically and ensure there is sustainability of jobs and be able to create more jobs, we need to be part and parcel of the value chain.

“We simply cannot own an airline and just have pilots and expect those pilots to be trained somewhere else.”