Growth in quantity of foreign-made commercial aircraft the Russian airlines increasingly prefer pushes the local educational institutions to change the system of pilots training. It is obvious that the Soviet era training airplanes at which students of majority of Russian pilot schools still practice already do not comply with the modern requirements and after the graduation pilots have to immediately get retrained to operate modern types of aircraft, which results in additional expenses and loss of time. Initial training of students to operate modern airplanes as an efficient and a less expensive method to solve the human resources problem may become a trend soon. At least, the first step towards this was already taken: the St. Petersburg State University of Civil Aviation (GUGA) started to renovate its Soviet fleet of training airplanes with foreign aircraft.
At the end of October, the university received the first single-engine Cessna 172S airplanes. GUGA and Cessna Aircraft signed a contract purchase-sale on 12 airplanes of this type and five simulators for initial training of pilots at the beginning of September. For operation of Cessna 172S in Russia the American manufacturer agreed to train engineers and technicians and to improve qualification of instructor pilots of the St. Petersburg University.
In the last few decades Cessna 172S earned reputation of a reliable and undemanding tool for training. Representatives of Cessna Aircraft presume that Russian higher educational institutions that are usually cash-strapped will also appreciate the price aspect of the matter: Cessna airplanes equipped with the state-of-the-art aviation systems are much cheaper than aircraft of the same class including the Russian ones. According to Alexander Yevdokimov, representative of Cessna Aircraft in Russia, "signing of a state contract means that the process of pilots training in Russia follows a path of international standardization of quality."
