Special awards for student pilots at Wings ceremony

Five special awards were presented as part of the celebration for 11 Bachelor of Aviation students presented with their Wings in front of family and friends at a ceremony at the Milson Flight Systems Centre today.

They have successfully completed training at the School of Aviation and are now fully qualified pilots. School chief executive Captain Ashok Poduval urged them to complete the final papers to get their Bachelor of Aviation – Air Transport Pilot degree. “This is a specialist degree in aviation and has all the building blocks you need to become a well-rounded aviator.”

Receiving their Wings insignia were: Herfandi Apriansyah, David Crowley, James Earnshaw, George Minors, Suresh Kumar Murukesan, Aashray Mysore, David Suan Wee Ong, Andrew Palmer, Ben Rae, Paras Tailor and Reenee Watene. Noel Chua, Chien Lee and Sharifee Mohammed Abbas received their Wings in absentia.

George Minors, of Southampton, England won a hat-trick of awards and was also on the Dean’s List for top grades. He was named Massey Outstanding Student and won the Airways Corporation Academic Award and Fieldair Engineering Limited Aviation Systems Award.

“I applied to Massey for its great reputation and its flight instructors’ course,” he said. “I have always wanted to become a flight instructor so I could take my love of teaching to the air.”

Herfandi Apriansyah, of Indonesia, received the Palmerston North International Airport Professional Attributes Award and Reenee Watene, of Manawatu, was presented with the Air New Zealand Flying Award.

Guest speaker was Air New Zealand's chief pilot, Captain David Morgan, who is also the airline's general manager of operations and safety. He said graduates could have confidence their would be jobs for them in industry. Air New Zealand operates 580 flights a day with 36,000 customers at a cost of $100 million.

“Aviation is an important part of the world’s economy with jobs in air commerce, training, military operations and tourism,” Captain Morgan said. “There will be a place for you.” He added that employers were looking for passion, attitude and maturity and he had seen that spark at the ceremony.

Massey is one of the few tertiary education institutions in the world to combine professional pilot training with university degree qualifications. Bachelor of Aviation Management students, who graduated this afternoon, also attended and had photographs taken with the University’s $8million aircraft fleet.