job ... where we are
weak is teaching the
people skills. It should
be a very strong part
of what we’re trying
to do. A Qantas
captain can walk into
the plane, close the
door and never see the
passengers. In regional
airlines, or charter
or joyflight business,
commercial pilots are dealing directly
with the customer. Mal and I saw the
weakness was there, and that’s where
we’ve added the training.”
So, to recap, Sharp Airlines trains
all their first officers from scratch,
employs them for nine months, then
sends them all off to other airlines
and fills their vacant right seats with
the next crop of cadets.
Anyone reading this is entitled
to ask “why the hell would you do
that!?” Surely it would be cheaperand easier to train a bunch of FOs
and keep them, or poach CFIs or
charter pilots like all the others do?
Apparently, that’s not the point.
“My key goal, the reason we took
on the cadetship, is that we could
see a pathway that could get aspiring
young pilots into the industry,” says
Sobey. “I don’t want to happen what
happened to me: after getting my
CPL there was no way known of
getting a job because there were no
jobs out there. Mal and I set this up
not only to get quality first officers,
but also to give them experience to go
out into the airlines. So far, we’ve had
a 100% success rate. The regional
airlines are coming to us for their
pilots now, and the reason is that
they are ready to work.”Beyond Sharp
Though the path goes from Cadet to
FO to somewhere else, Sharp Airlines
also needs Captains to give the FOs
the operational experience that makes
them such a sought-after commodity.
Rather than recruit from outside,
Sharp and Sobey prefer to look at
their own fraternity for skippers.
“In each course, we selectprobably three or four we’ve
thought of being exceptional right
from the day they started,” Sobey
explains, “and it might not be the
ones who get 95% right through
their theory, but the ones who have
‘Sharpenised ’ well. Mal and I will
ask them to stay on and become
Captains. Most of our Captains
have either been here all the time,
or they’ve left and come back. We
may have one or two that haven’t
been through our course.
“It’s that Sharpenising that I miss
when I have to employ someone
from outside of Sharp. They’re good
people, trained well by qualified
instructors that I have a lot of time
for. They can fly the Metroliner, no
doubt, but what they can’t handle is
the company environment, and that
the most important thing to SharpAirlines is our passengers.
“Four stripes doesn’t mean you
shut the door behind you and just
go and fly an aeroplane. Four stripes
means that you are responsible for
every single component of Sharp
Airlines that you have to deal with.”
This is a point of pride with Sobey,
and it shows on his face when he
recounts a recent trip Mal Sharp
took around Australia. He flew on
several sectors with several airlines,
and in each aircraft one of the flight
crew was a former Sharp cadet.
That’s a big tick for a small
regional airline.
Captain Ash Clark is a prime
example of a prodigal pilot. After
going through the cadetship and
a few months as Metro FO, Clark
was packed off to Brindabella
after Sobey took a call from the
Canberra-based airline.
When Brindabella faded from
the regional scene last year, Clark
scored the plum job of ferrying their
Jetstreams back to Europe, then
returned to Sharp where he finished
his right-seat time. He now sports four
bars on his epaulettes and commands
Metros on the Essendon-Portland run.
Pilots like Clark have beenFlight Training
Four stripes doesn’t mean you
shut the door behind you and just
go and fly an aeroplane70
AUSTRALIAN FLYING January - February 2015FROM TOP TO BOTTOM:
An instructor takes cadets
through some revision for their
CPL Performance exam.
Being a regional airline pilot
means doing a lot of the flight
preparation yourself.
CFI and father figure of Sharp
Airlines, Peter Sobey.