ICAO-certified training school to take Guyana’s aviation industry to new heights

By: Kelroy Williams

Guyana’s decades-old Civil Aviation Training School this year became accredited by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), marking a significant milestone in enhancing the country’s aviation standards and training capabilities.

Established in 1974 as the Air Traffic Services Training School, the Guyana Civil Aviation Training School (CATS) has been a key part of air traffic services training in Guyana, including training air traffic controllers and assistants.

The school, located at Timehri, was late last year accredited by TRAINAIR, a global training programme under ICAO.

In an interview with this publication on Tuesday, the school’s principal Clifford Van Doimen – who has more than six years of service at the institution under his belt – remarked that this accreditation will be a gamechanger for the school as well as the local aviation industry.

Van Doimen explained that the school was initially established to train persons in the Air Traffic control field, however as of recent, it now offers a wide range of courses such as radiotelephony.

“The Civil Aviation Training School was set up to train for the Air Navigation Services Directorate, which is a part of the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority… Within recent years, we’ve started to change and offer courses to persons outside of the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority… To date, the courses that we offer to persons outside of the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority includes courses like the ab-initio general, which prepares persons entering the aviation fraternity.”

In fact, he noted with the ICAO-accreditation, the school is now authorised to train persons in over 500 courses. However, only some are available, based on demand.

The principal also noted that this certification allows Guyana’s training courses to be recognised globally.

“They have available about 500 training programmes that we can actually draw on and host right here in Guyana. What it does for Guyanese and for Guyana is, a Guyanese that wants to undergo a particular training programme, let’s say a flight dispatcher programme, can now access that programme locally…,” he emphasised.

“The next thing it does is it gives any person in Guyana international recognition in terms of the certificate that they would have been trained and received. So, you do a programme here, you receive an international certificate, and then you can now use that certificate to work outside of Guyana.”

Moreover, the principal revealed that the international accreditation has opened up new revenue streams for the institution. Van Doimen highlighted that persons from neighboring countries such as Suriname and Barbados have already applied to be trained under the institution.

“Now we can now commercialise the school and charge revenue for persons coming in to do particular programmes, and we’ve already started to do that.”

“We’ve had persons from Suriname, Barbados, persons showing interest from St. Vincent. So we’ve had persons from the diaspora, the regional diaspora, coming into Guyana to actually conduct the training…If you look at the TRAINAIR Plus platform, you will see for the training instructor’s course, we were the only persons in this region meaning Caribbean and South American that was hosting the programme,” the principal noted.

Meanwhile, Van Doimen has committed to ensuring the school under his supervision continues to strive for greatness and continues to play a role in the development of the local aviation sector.

“I would like to say to young people that might be looking at this interview that aviation is still one of the best and most fruitful careers in my view…we’ve had young people that came in here, started doing ATC, went out and piloted. So, it’s an opportunity for them to really get into aviation. It’s an opportunity for young people to have standardised, internationally recognised training programmes offered to them, even if they’re in other parts of the industry, maybe the airline, engineering, we can do all the programmes here. So, contact us.”

Persons desirous of entering into the aviation fraternity can visit the Civil Aviation Training School website at https://cats.edu.gy/training/