WMU News

First Emirates Airlines cadets get WMU wings

March 21, 2000

KALAMAZOO -- The first seven cadets sent to Western Michigan University's International Pilot Training Centre by Emirates Airlines have completed their training and will get their WMU wings in a ceremony set for 5 p.m. Thursday, March 23, in the library of the Aviation Education Center at WMU's College of Aviation facilities at W.K. Kellogg Airport in Battle Creek.

The students will each receive a certificate and a commemorative set of WMU wings. Four major awards to cadets in the class also will be announced. Making presentations at the ceremony will be Gary Brown, general manager of pilot training for Emirates Airlines, and WMU President Elson S. Floyd.

Those attending the ceremony will include Battle Creek area civic, political and economic development leaders and University officials. Cadets from other IPTC classes and IPTC faculty and staff also will attend the ceremony.

The seven Emirates cadets are now scheduled to go on to the United Kingdom where they will receive four weeks of additional flight training. They then must complete a jet orientation course before taking a final conversion course to prepare them for the specific types of Emirates planes they will be flying.

The group being honored is the first class of Emirates cadets to arrive at WMU under terms of a 1998 contract with the airline, which has its headquarters in the United Arab Emirates. Since the first group arrived in August 1998, three additional classes of Emirates cadets have begun training at WMU. A fifth group will arrive in April.

WMU's IPTC also has contracts with Aer Lingus and British Airways. Cadets from those two airlines' first classes, which arrived early in 1998, recently began working as first officers on commercial flights for their respective companies.

Media contact: Cheryl Roland, 616 387-8400, cheryl.roland@wmich.edu


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