Gateway to the global sky open to local training academy
ITC Academy made history when it was awarded EASA certification.
“A family that fights together, stays together.”
These are the words of Arina van Tonder, one of the three dynamic people who run ITC Academy based at Rand Airport.
Not only is the company a family-owned enterprise run by Marthinus Potgieter, his daughter Arina and son-in-law Matthys van Tonder, but they believe their students and qualified aircraft engineers are part of the family and everyone works to a collective goal.
ITC Academy was founded in 2007 by Potgieter, a former technical training manager at South African Airways (SAA).
“Aviation has been my lifelong passion and I learned everything I know at SAA,” said Marthinus.
“I founded ITC Academy with one absolute goal and that was to train and produce top quality aircraft engineers, not only within South Africa but globally.”
And the academy has certainly been growing towards that, training people throughout South Africa, as well as all over Africa.
Now reaching global training status has become an achievable goal as the academy was recently awarded a European Aviation Safety Authority (EASA) basic training certificate.
Making the academy the only approved EASA training facility in Southern Africa.
“The EASA certificate is our golden ticket to the world,” said Marthinus.
EASA is the ultimate approval to have within the aviation industry.
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With an EASA basic training qualification, you can work anywhere in the world as they are deemed the highest authority globally.
It took 18 months and approximately R1-million to attain the certification.
The academy does not have an external investor so they had to come up with the money themselves, but they did, and now they can be competitive in the world.
When training students the team tries to instill a passion for aviation into their apprentices.
“Aviation is not a job, it is a passion,” said Marthinus.
“We have a relationship with all our students and as long as you are an aircraft engineer we will have a relationship. You are part of the ITC family,” said Arina.
Potgieter added that you must be passionate, as well as have an aptitude for the job.
“It is important to have good maths and physics marks for Grade 12,” he said.
Arina said that when taking on a new student at the academy they do personality tests and job readiness tests with the apprentice.
These tests are administered by a psychologist.
The apprentices are also involved in helping at the academy.
Arina said she has a social media squad, as well as a marketing department, made up of students, who assist her.
ITC has an EASA plan which will be implemented in January.
They will start off with examinations on different modules for already qualified engineers.
Then basic training (A-Level) will commence for new students.
The course involves 800 hours of theory, as well as one-year of practical training.
Once aircraft engineers have completed the required training they can progress to becoming a B1 or B2 engineer (an engineer who is highly qualified in Europe).
“The EASA training will be a stepping stone to the world for aircraft engineers,” said Marthinus.
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