Saudi students set for take-off
A group of Saudi Arabian students has graduated on the way to their dream jobs as air traffic controllers.
Twenty-five students from Airways International graduated from its air traffic control course at Wharerata at Massey University, Palmerston North, on Thursday.
Airways International’s training centre is at Massey’s aviation centre in the city, but it is not affiliated to the Massey school of aviation.
Moammal Alahdal, 21, from
Mecca, was one of the students graduating with a level-sixnew Zealand diploma in air traffic services.
Alahdal said he and a friend applied after seeing an ad for the course.
‘‘I didn’t know what air traffic control was all about.
‘‘But coming here and knowing about it more and more, realising how big this industry is and how important our job is, I grew to love it and here I am graduating as an air traffic controller.
‘‘I’ll be living the dream of being able to work in such a position, being in the hot seat.’’
The course comes under a control training scholarship provided by the Saudi Arabia government through the Ministry of Education and the General Authority of Civil Aviation.
Alahdal will find out what role he will be given when he returns home to begin on-the-job training before becoming fully qualifiedwith Saudi Air Navigation Services.
He said graduation wasn’t the end because they would still learn on the job.
Working in air traffic control was an essential job and they needed to focus because they were dealing with people’s lives, he said.