Time passed quickly, and a month passed peacefully. Since his rebirth, Xu Cang seemed to have never had a rest, but in the past month, Xu Cang enjoyed the long-lost peace.
During this period, most of the company's employees have moved to the dormitory building of the new base, and the cafeteria has also been put into use. However, the main administrative building will have to wait a while, as some minor interior decoration has not been completed, and it will also take some time for ventilation.
However, after most of the employees moved out of the old base, a lot of space was freed up in the small courtyard. Even though the new main administrative building has not yet been put into use, at least in terms of workspace, Spring Airlines has already been quite comfortable.
According to Xu Cang's idea, when the new base is fully operational, the old base should also be kept and used as a warehouse in the future. The new base is very expensive, and it is a waste to put an aviation material warehouse in it.
After moving to a new home happily, Xu Cang felt refreshed as he had no worries this month. However, it was not entirely true that there were no worries at all. At least Ji Dong's father, Ji Kaiming, seemed to be avoiding Xu Cang on purpose. He had said that he would be back in a few days, but he kept delaying. A month had passed, and the two had not met yet.
Of course, Xu Cang didn't force such a thing. Maybe Ji Kaiming really had something to do? If he didn't, then he could just avoid him. He didn't like to force himself on others. If Ji Kaiming didn't want to, he would just let it go.
To get a good start in his freight business, he doesn't have to start with fruit air transport in the northwest. There are many other entry points. For example, Jianchuan is rich in flowers, and there is a great demand for flowers in the country, especially in the eastern coastal areas. Xu Cang can completely transport flowers by air.
However, flowers are in great demand, but not as much as fruits. If you have a choice, it is better to ship fruits by air.
Compared to Ji Kaiming, who Xu Cang couldn't understand, his son Ji Dong was very enthusiastic. He came to Erhai Base to play every few days, and he was still trying to persuade Xu Cang to accept him as his apprentice. However, after spending some time together, Xu Cang almost understood why Bi Lin was unwilling to let Ji Dong learn to fly.
This guy is really too jumpy, just like a little rabbit, he can't settle down for a moment. It seems that two years of field work in the surveying team has not tempered Ji Dong's temper. From a personal emotional point of view, Xu Cang still prefers to get along with Ji Dong.
Ji Dong is smart and doesn't have the bad habits of a rich second-generation. He easily gets along well with the company's employees. Who wouldn't like him? However, he can be a friend, but not a master.
In the past month, Korean Air and Asiana Airlines have been fighting fiercely, and the two airlines have been engaged in a crazy price war. This would not have been a big deal, but the big two fought to the death, and the small airlines behind were affected and could only passively participate in the price war, resulting in serious financial crises for the airlines at the bottom of the rankings.
The small airlines that were affected had no choice but to ask the government to intervene and stop the commercial competition between the two airlines. However, the marketing and legal departments of Korean Air and Asiana Airlines were a group of savvy people, and their commercial competition was all within the scope permitted by the law. The government could not find any evidence of vicious competition between the two airlines, so there was no reason to intervene.
However, the matter is getting bigger and bigger, and it has been reported in the newspapers more than once. Xu Cang expects that even if there is no sufficient reason, the South Korean authorities will still intervene.
Xu Cang watched the battle between the top two of Korean Air from thousands of miles away, and he realized that Asiana Airlines was not as weak as he thought. However, this was just right. If Asiana Airlines was too weak, Korean Air would fall down as soon as it made a move. How could they bleed Korean Air?
Korean Air and Asiana Airlines were competing fiercely, and Xu Cang was enjoying the show. In addition to this happy event, Spring Airlines was also making good progress in recruiting pilots.
Liu Minxue of Muhua Airlines started to set up the flight recruitment office after joining the company. Since Spring Airlines is not large at present, it will not recruit many students, which gives Liu Minxue room to operate personally. Otherwise, if there are too many people, Liu Minxue will not be able to cope with it.
Liu Minxue had worked as the director of the flight recruitment office at Muhua Airlines for a long time. He already had some connections and started working hard right after joining the company. After several social recruitments, he had found some good candidates, including some mature pilots.
In the recruitment office, Liu Minxue spread out more than a dozen thin recruitment files for Xu Cang. The people in them were all selected by , including three experienced pilots from other airlines, two co-pilots, and one captain.
"We were still a little slow in recruiting this year. All the people were snatched up by the three major airlines, and the rest were divided up by other smaller companies. We can only pick and choose the last batch of people."
Speaking of this, Xu Cang felt a little embarrassed: "This is my fault. I was used to poaching people from other airlines, so I didn't think about recruiting pilots, which delayed the matter."
In the past, domestic airlines did not recruit people very aggressively, after all, the domestic civil aviation market did not develop very fast in the past few years. But since the deregulation of civil aviation, everyone in the industry knows that there will be a shortage of people, so this year, the major airlines, led by the Big Three, have started to recruit a large number of people, so that Spring Airlines, which was a step behind, can only eat the leftovers.
Liu Minxue was sitting on a small stool. The office assigned to Liu Minxue was undoubtedly much more shabby than his previous office in Muhua, but his face was always filled with the long-lost enthusiasm for work.
"It's okay to suffer a little loss in social recruitment, the key is the aviation school. If we can recruit good and mature pilots through social recruitment, that would be great, but this is rare after all. The people recruited from the society are... too old. I know it's a bit cruel to say this, but from the perspective of company benefits, the students from the aviation school are definitely the best."
Airlines prefer fresh graduates from aviation schools for the same reason that the labor market prefers fresh graduates, which includes quite realistic factors. Liu Minxue doesn't like these things very much, but he has to do them.
Xu Cang nodded and agreed: "We do need to communicate with the Aviation School. Director Liu, do you have any connections at the Aviation School? Should we also cooperate with the Flight Academy in the future?"
Liu Minxue sighed, "If it were in the past, with my relationship with the flight academy, I would have no problem intercepting some students. But you know, airlines across the country are scrambling for talent now. The social recruitment market is scrambling, and the aviation academy is even more competitive. In the past two years, a graduate who received a private business license and completed high-performance training was paid about 600,000 yuan. Now it has risen to 800,000 yuan, and it will definitely rise in the future. As for how much it will rise, I don't know. However, I heard that the latest batch has been negotiated to one million per person, but whether this negotiated price will eventually be realized is unknown."
There are generally two ways for aviation schools to train students. One is company-specific training, that is, the airline recruits people itself, and then signs a training agreement with the aviation school and pays the corresponding training fees. The aviation school will train the students commissioned by the company, and the process is completed.
Another way is for the aviation school to recruit people by itself, and then pay for the training of students. After the students graduate, the aviation school will negotiate with the airlines. The airlines can pay a certain fee for the number of students they want. This is considered as buying and selling now, and is more suitable for airlines that have unexpected staff shortages.
Generally speaking, aviation schools will have some assessment of the domestic pilot demand market and will definitely not blindly train students themselves, otherwise there will be too many, which will be a burden on their hands. However, with the sudden relaxation of civil aviation control, almost all domestic airlines have personnel shortages. Suddenly, the flight students who were originally tepid have become popular, and the price has naturally risen.
But this price increase really made Xu Cang feel incredible.
"One million, the aviation school is robbing them of money!" Xu Cang cried out in pain. This was just over 2000 years ago, and one million was worth a lot of money at that time. Although he expected that the price of flight trainees would rise due to the explosive development of the civil aviation market, a rise to one million was too outrageous.
Liu Minxue was also quite speechless: "There are routes now but no one is flying them. What's one million? As long as we can get the plane flying, we can easily earn back the money. Xu Cang, now it's not a matter of money. There are too many wolves and too little meat. No, this statement is not quite accurate. It's that there are too many wolves and too little meat."
The pilot industry is very special, and the entry threshold is too high. First of all, the physical examination eliminates many people, and it is not a one-time test. If you fail the annual inspection, you are finished. Later, people will be eliminated in the aviation school due to technical reasons. The elimination rate is still quite scary.
The threshold is high and the training cycle is long, which means that even if the aviation school wants to, it is impossible for it to increase the number of trainees all at once. There is a huge lag in this.
"Looking at the current situation, even my most conservative estimate is that domestic civil aviation will be in a shortage of pilots in the next ten years." Liu Minxue said earnestly: "The price of poaching people from other airlines may be acceptable now, but it will get higher and higher in the future. Unless there is an urgent need, the benefits of poaching people from other airlines will not be very high. Aviation school students are a relatively low-cost and higher-profit option in the long run."
Xu Cang remained silent. In fact, Liu Minxue's estimate was too conservative. At least as far as Xu Cang knew, domestic pilots would be in a very tense situation in the next fifteen years, and the situation would not be reversed until twenty years later.
Moreover, Liu Minxue was right. Xu Cang remembered that the price of poaching pilots became more and more outrageous, and even reached tens of millions. In addition, poaching people from other airlines is always not a glorious thing, and it is easy to be hated by other airlines.
Although they are both airlines, as long as the size difference is not too big, they can't do anything to each other. But who would feel itchy and think that they have too few enemies?
Xu Cang clicked his tongue: "But Director Liu, I hear what you mean, your words are not going to work in the aviation school now."
A trace of embarrassment flashed across Liu Minxue's face. "We can't help it. The competition for talent is too fierce. Especially the three major airlines. I heard that the top executives of the three companies have inquired about it, and some have even visited the aviation school in person. We can't compare to that kind of face."
Xu Cang touched his chin and immediately began to feel embarrassed. All the people in this flight academy have been snatched up by the three major airlines. There are not many people left, and they are all mediocre. Even with these, Spring Airlines has to continue to compete with other airlines besides the three major airlines. This difficulty is really too high.
"How about we cooperate with the aviation school and provide targeted training?" Xu Cang asked.
"No, the aviation school is limited by the number of flight instructors and training aircraft, and the number of students that can be trained remains roughly unchanged. Now it is a seller's market for students, and the profit of targeted training is not high. The aviation school cannot expand the number of targeted training. The quota for targeted training has been booked for three years later, so where is our place?"
For aviation schools, training by airline companies is a guaranteed income, so the fees charged by aviation schools are naturally lower. For self-training by aviation schools, although there is market evaluation and there is a high probability that nothing will go wrong, there are still unexpected events. If something goes wrong, the aviation school will lose money. In this way, in the second type of self-training by aviation schools, since the aviation schools bear a certain amount of risk, the fees charged after selling to airlines in the later stage will be higher.
In the past, the ratio of training by airlines and training by flight schools was the same in order to share the risk. But now that flight trainees are no longer a problem, flight schools are definitely more willing to train themselves and then sell them at a higher price.
In this way, the additional number of students trained by the aviation school as it expands its flight instructor team and the number of training aircraft will be added to the scope of self-training, rather than being distributed in parts to the airlines for targeted training.
From this perspective, the lower-priced targeted training is definitely a hot commodity. Moreover, the targeted training contracts signed between aviation schools and airlines are often signed for several years. Aviation schools are unwilling to expand the number of targeted training, and airlines that have already signed contracts are certainly unwilling to let go, so Spring Airlines has no chance at all.
Basically, the market for targeted training is more fixed than the market for self-training by aviation schools, so there is basically no need to consider it.
"The company currently has enough pilots in reserve, but I don't think you are the type who wants to take things step by step. If you want the company to grow quickly, the reserve force will not be able to keep up, which will be a major constraint."
Previously, Xu Cang had mainly recruited a lot from Muhua Airlines, as well as some scattered mature pilots, such as the Guan brothers. The largest number was the crew that came with the twenty ARJ21s.
However, the ARJ21 aircraft is too special, and the crew members are basically stuck with the ARJ21 and cannot be transferred to other models unless the company is willing to pay huge modification costs.
Spring Airlines now has twenty ARJ21s, three 737-800s, and two 737-900s. In addition, Boeing owes Xu Cang one 737-900.
Perhaps in view of Xu Cang's behavior in handing over the flight data recorder 1566, Boeing, in addition to transferring the genuine authorization of some aviation materials as required by the agreement, also delivered one of the other two 737-900s promised previously ahead of schedule, and the last one is said to be delivered in the near future.
In fact, if there are two 737-900 aircraft, by slightly adjusting the flight schedule, three flights, Jianchuan-Hanjing, Hanjing-Yangcheng, and Yangcheng-Jianchuan, can be completed in one day.
Xu Cang's idea is to have two 737-900s take off from Jianchuan at the same time, one flying along Jianchuan-Hanjing-Yangcheng-Jianchuan, and the other flying along Jianchuan-Yangcheng-Hanjing-Jianchuan. Theoretically, the round trip from Hanjing to Yangcheng will be completed at almost the same time. However, the schedules of other segments need to be slightly adjusted to match the time.
However, if this is done, the company's internal transportation capacity will be stretched, so now Jianchuan-Hanjing and Jianchuan-Yangcheng are still flown separately, and the Hanjing-Yangcheng route is still operated by Guoda Airlines.
Perhaps it was because he had been recruiting people too smoothly before, so Xu Cang was indeed somewhat neglectful in the training of reserve talents. After being reminded by Liu Minxue today, this sense of crisis suddenly came.
"How many flight trainees do you think should be recruited each year?" Xu Cang asked.
"That depends on how fast you want your company to grow." Liu Minxue thought for a moment: "If you don't have a clear idea, with the current size of the company, it's best to recruit about 20 pilot trainees each year. However, everyone knows that civil aviation is going to explode, but to what extent is still an unknown. The number of subsequent recruitments will have to be adjusted according to the actual situation."
In fact, Xu Cang had no idea to what extent the civil aviation market would expand in the future. He only had a rough impression. After all, before his rebirth, he was the chief pilot, not in the Transportation Department or the Airport Department.
"Twenty?" Xu Cang thought for a moment and said, "I feel this number is still too few."
Liu Minxue: "This is the minimum number requirement, but I think it will be very difficult to achieve this goal. The General Administration relaxed the control too suddenly, and the Flight Academy didn't seem to be prepared. Xu Cang... that..."
"Well, what's wrong?"
"The Flight Academy is controlling the airlines now. We are powerless and have little influence. If we want to get enough students in the Flight Academy, we have to take a harder approach. For example, your master?"
Xu Cang was not surprised by Liu Minxue's proposal. He even said that when Liu Minxue mentioned the current flight trainee market, he thought of his mentor Chen Xiangdong, the former dean of the flight academy.
Chen Xiangdong has been the president of the Civil Aviation Flight Academy for nearly 20 years. Even though he has left now, his influence is still quite huge. If Chen Xiangdong were to come forward, Spring Airlines' embarrassing situation might be reversed.
It's just that Chen Xiangdong's position is quite sensitive now. If Xu Cang uses Chen Xiangdong to do things, it always feels a bit bad. After all, it seems that he is abusing his power for personal gain. Chen Xiangdong is only one step away now, and Xu Cang is not willing to cause trouble for Chen Xiangdong at this point.
Seeing that Xu Cang was slow to speak, Liu Minxue probably understood Xu Cang's concerns. Logically speaking, if Chen Xiangdong used his connections at the Civil Aviation Flight Academy to seek benefits for Xu Cang, this would indeed become a handle for others to attack him.
Since Xu Cang remained silent, Liu Minxue couldn't say anything more. After all, it was related to Chen Xiangdong's future.
"I will do my best to mediate the matter of the Flight Academy. If there is a real shortage of personnel, we can hire some foreigners..."
Before Liu Minxue could finish his words, a man suddenly rushed into the office door. It was Lu Jinghua, the general manager of the flight department.
Xu Cang saw Lu Jinghua was in a hurry, as if he had something urgent to do: "What's wrong?"
"Xu Cang, the test flight procedure at Jinghong Airport has just ended..."
"Well, is there any problem?" Xu Cang said casually.
Previously, Xu Cang spent 40 million yuan to have the National Design Institute customize a set of flight procedures for Jinghong Airport. Not long ago, the procedures were completed. To be precise, Jinghong Airport’s test flight was not called a test flight, but a test run.
Compared with the life-risking test flights at Qitai Airport, the procedural test runs at Jinghong Airport are normal twin-engine flights. All you have to do is fly a few times according to the procedures, and there is no danger.
However, even though it was such a logical thing, Lu Jinghua's face was quite ugly: "Xu Cang, the procedure issued by the design institute seems to be... wrong!"