It was a full house for Atlantic Flight Training Academy when it opened its doors to the public on Sunday 16 August. AFTA was delighted to welcome so many interested people for a very busy day indeed. Great to see a full house from start time of 11am, and events got underway almost immediately. M.D. of AFTA Mark Casey welcomed everyone and briefly outlined how the Academy had gone from strength to strength in its 20 years of operation. He said, “We have trained over 1500 pilots, and many of our commercial pilots are working for top class airlines such as British Airways, Emirates, Aer Lingus, Ryanair, Stobart Air, Easyject, Cityjet and Flybe.”
Six excellent speakers from the varied fields of aviation spoke throughout the day. These included AFTA’s aerobatics instructor and ex RAF pilot Gerry Humphreys; AFTA’s MCC Instructor, Hans Sykens; Declan Dooney from Exel Aviation, and formerly of Ryanair; Gerry Gibbs from Carlow IT Aviation Dept, AFTA’s Senior Ground Instructor Tom Brown and Alan Ryan from Cathay Pacific.
Ten lucky competition winners for free flying lessons were announced by Miss Cork Gillian Forde. And the winners were given a guided tour of operations, including the hangar and our fleet in preparation for their flying lessons to take place shortly.
Such was the interest among everyone in hearing all of the speakers that we delayed bringing people to our Boeing 737 Simulator, based at our facility on Little Island until the end of the day. And the simulator was kept up and running until the early evening to ensure everyone got a chance to sit in the driving seat and take the controls!
