By Kloe Palmer
Twenty-seven Saudi Arabian students have just graduated from New Zealand's only air traffic control training programme - over half of all the programme's students are international.
As more and more foreigners show interest in the course each year it seems New Zealand is becoming recognised globally as a top provider of air traffic control training.
Air traffic controllers are responsible for insuring the safety of thousands of aircraft a year.
The job's all about spatial awareness - it can be high risk and high stress, but with that comes high reward - the average wage is around $150,000 per year.
Airways New Zealand trains around 50 air traffic controllers a year and around half of those are foreigners.
“We know that we have a high quality product, we know there's huge growth internationally in the aviation industry and so we are really gearing up to meet that demand,” says Airways NZ’s Sharon Cooke.
The school has taught students from the United Arab Emirates, China, Indonesia and the Pacific Islands. Right now Saudi Arabians are the most common.
Twenty-seven Saudi students graduated the course last week and are now qualified to work anywhere in the world.
“We've developed a competency based training programme and we have high success rates, people invest a lot of money in ATC training so they know if they train with us they are going to have a good likelihood of success,” says Ms Cooke.
It's also due to the facilities on offer here - instead of buying in simulators from overseas, Airways have developed their own state of the art technology.
They have graphics for most of the country’s airports, which are taken from photos while the planes and weather are computer generated - it's this quality which is attracting other countries here.
Airways simulators were developed for training purpose, but after attracting so much interest internationally they've just sold their first one to South Africa and they're not cheap – starting out at a cost of around $2 million.
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