Soaring through opportunity in the international scene
L TIM KALINOWSKI
es Little has long been synonymous with pilot training in southeast Alberta. He started Bar XH Air Inc. transport and aviation academy 50 years ago, graduating hundreds of new pilots in the decades that followed. After “retiring” and selling Bar XH, Les and wife Terri Super began Super T Aviation in 2008.
At any given time Super T has about 15 students enrolled in its flight school. It’s a successful business which satisfies their own personal bliss and allows Terri and Les to fly on an almost daily basis. One wouldn’t think they would hope for more. But even greater than their desire to fly, what drives Terri and Les is their desire to build.
In the last seven years, Super T has massively renovated its office facility, bought a state-of-the-art flight simulator and built a whole new compound at the Medicine Hat Regional Airport. In 2015, Super T is planning to embark on the most ambitious expansion to date by entering the international market.
Over the next few years China is expected to open its air space in a massive way to private sector air flight. This will allow private companies and personal jets to operate for the first time in what has previously been a very exclusive, state- controlled air zone. The opening of the skies in China will usher in the need for an estimated 20,000 new commercial aviators in that nation in the next five years, and perhaps as many as 200,000 aviators in total over the next 20 years.
According to Les it is the unlimited potential in these large numbers that has him and Terri so excited.
“The whole idea for us is riding the trend up and being there first,” says Les. “It really is still quite exciting to have a project like this to go out and work on and foster along.”
“We are trying to get into a growth mode,” agrees Terri. 34 2015 REPORT ON SOUTHEAST ALBERTA
“We just signed a Memorandum of Understanding with a group in China that will send up to 20 students a year here to Medicine Hat. We want to have a first-class operation. If that means we start off smaller and work our way up that’s what we’re going to do. In that way we are not just taking students just to make a buck. We want them to have success and establish a good reputation for this program overseas.”
Terri and Les went to China under the auspices of Air Transport Association of Canada trade missions three times last year to begin laying the ground work for their international expansion. They will return once more this year to ink the final agreement and get the ball rolling.
Right away Les and Terri realized if their efforts were going to be successful their incoming students would need to have access to a quality ESL program to take in conjunction with their pilot training. Les and Terri decided to approach Medicine Hat College to see if a partnership was possible in that respect. They found MHC more than willing.
“The college has an excellent ESL program; and if you have international students they will come here and get enrolled in that program,” says Terri. “So we won’t start training until the college says they are at a level where they can handle it language-wise. There’s a huge advantage there, and the schools in China are looking for that grounding in English. And then there is the opportunity to be involved with the college where they can offer students diplomas and degrees. A lot of international students want that whole package.”
“We really want to offer these students more than just the aviation,” explains Les. “Aviation is big thing, and they could do nothing else and make a career out of that. But, in our opinion, to be really successful in the industry if they have more than just the flying then that’s what really opens the door.”
Stephen Finnagan, dean of business and enterprise at MHC, says the college is also excited about the long term potential
Terri Super and Bowen Lee, who are both charter pilots and fl ying instructors, sit in a fl ight simulator at Super T Aviation.
of Super T’s efforts to bring more international students to Medicine Hat for flight training. According to Finnagan, it’s a partnership which is worth exploring in greater depth in the years ahead.
“This came forward from industry and we are pursuing it,” says Finnagan. “There are opportunities that need to be looked at both domestically and internationally. If those opportunities prove themselves to be substantial, then we would give consideration as to whether or not we link any non-credit or credit training at MHC in the form of perhaps a diploma program in aviation management. We are really at the beginning stages of all of this.”
Finnagan credits Super T for its ambition, its broad scope of vision and its willingness to move forward on the vast and uncharted potential of such an international expansion.
“There is that substantial opportunity that cannot be ignored that they have in the international scene. The opportunity is really exciting. I also see this initiative as a first step toward building more training capacity in the region overall. If we can help it evolve to add some vitally important economic development into the region, we should at least be seeing what the possibilities are.”
After so many decades of running a successful business in the Medicine Hat area, Les and Terri have learned the importance of being willing to strike while the iron is hot. A business cannot remain stagnant, says Les. It must embrace change and always be one step ahead to control the pace of that change.
“I think you just always have to be looking for the next opportunity in your scope. You keep an ear to the ground and be open to any ideas that puts a new spin on it, a new twist, that makes it more enticing for people to get in. That’s what you have to be doing all the time. If you sit here and wait for the phone to ring pretty soon the phone isn’t going to ring anymore. You’ve got to do something to get out and entice people.” ■
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