This follows the Glen Innes Severn Council deciding earlier this year to grant a twelve month extension of the date to commence construction of the flight training school to allow them to seek overseas finance.

Director of Australia Asia Flight Training Neil Hansford said funding is now at an advanced stage of due diligence and searches which will allow the project to move forward to the legal requirements of all party’s involved.

“Nothing ever happens as fast as you want it, but the complexity of the airport and training operations requires lawyers from all parties to go over things carefully in compliance with the laws in each country involved,” he said. 

"The market is getting even stronger and we will certainly get it started and then it will happen at a rate faster than was initially contemplated, certainly it won’t take four years to get to fourth stage."

Fellow Australia Asia Flight Training Director Kingsley Mundey said the delay in getting finance was due to complications with their initial financier.

“In May 2013 we had a commitment from a United Kingdom company to fund us and it took two years to prove they weren’t able to deliver and for us to legally extricate ourselves from the contract,” he said.

Chairman of the Training Practices Workstream of the  International Pilot training  Consortium Captain John Bent  said the that  the scale of this opportunity  is yet to be fully  appreciated, or  acted upon. 

“Even allowing for organic growth, such is the existing Australian supply to China and new developments in Singapore, the whole region will still need to send approximately 5000 trainee pilots out of the region per annum for the next decade or so," he said.