Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University is commemorating its great past in Brazil here at this year’s LABACE, while also announcing concrete steps for a greater future here. On the first day of the show, the U.S. school announced plans for a new joint venture in Brazil with aircraft management group C>Fly Aviation.

“Embry-Riddle has determined to reconnect to Brazil,” Fábio Campos, the university’s Brazil liaison and head of its new permanent office in São Paulo told AIN.

Embry-Riddle (Booth 1018) founded an aviation school in São Paulo in 1943 with curriculum and professors from ERAU. Seventy years later, besides adding its new office, Embry-Riddle will administer a course jointly with Brazilian university PUC-RS, starting August 31. The eventual goal is to establish a commuter campus in Brazil offering the same complete aviation curriculum as the campuses in the U.S., to supply “everything aviation needs, not to just train pilots, but courses in the business of aviation, and professional training courses…to train for the whole aviation industry.”

At the LABACE Opening Ceremony yesterday morning, Embry-Riddle president Dr. John Watret, and the commandant of the Brazilian air force, Air Brigadier Nivaldo Luiz Rossato, jointly presented a commemorative plaque to Francisco Drezza, 94, who studied air traffic control and graduated at the top of the first class to graduate from the São Paulo school.

ERAU sponsored the lunch after the opening ceremony, where it unveiled its plans for new initiatives in Brazil to meet the demands during the next two decades. One of those joint ventures, with C>Fly Aviation, aims to “exponentially increase the scale of aeronautical training” and “to set a new benchmark for aviation education,” by raising and modernizing standards in Brazil.

During the lunch, five other students of the wartime school, Remy Gomes Ferreira, Nelson Garcia Perez, Alberto Bertolucci, Irineu Tonon and Edgar Zanata, were individually honored for their service to Brazilian aviation.

Human Factors ERAU will conduct a course on Human Factors in Aviation in cooperation with PUC-RS, the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul. That course will be taught jointly in English by John Scribner of ERAU and Eder Henriqson of PUC-RS, online starting August 31, with a physical class at PUC-RS in Porto Alegre commencing on October 9.

ERAU is also offering, from the U.S., a free massive online course on aviation accident investigation starting August 17. There is considerable interest in aviation training among Brazilians; Campos told AIN that of the 1,400 students worldwide who filled out an education survey, “almost 300 were Brazilian.” A series of ERAU open houses around the country in March, seeking students for Embry-Riddle’s two U.S. campuses, were also very well attended, said Campos.

C>Fly Aviation’s Francisco Lyra spoke at the luncheon on what Brazilian aviation will need in terms of trained professionals, and how the partnership with ERAU will provide them. Lyra is a former commercial pilot who has served as chairman of Brazilian general aviation trade association ABAG, and is a partner with JHSF in the São Paulo Catarina Business Airport.

Lyra told AIN that the Brazilian Airlines Association (ABEAR) commissioned a study (from Baen & Co.) which showed a need for 660,000 new aviation professionals in the coming years. That’s not just pilots and mechanics, but also airport workers and other professionals linked to aviation. “There are more than 70 courses that need to be taught,” he said. “Even the cleaning workers need a certificate…they have to know how to deal with an abandoned knapsack in a restroom; and workers on the runway need to know how to avoid getting sucked into a jet engine. And there’s a need for continuing education, to keep up to date.”

Both Campos and Lyra emphasized the need to modernize aviation education standards in Brazil, where in some cases curriculum requirements were set in the 1950s. Both noted that in order to be certified in Brazil, a mechanic must learn how to work on a radial engine, a skill Campos joked could be “useful in a museum.” Campos said that discussions have been opened with the ANAC aviation authority on modernizing standards.

Top-level Support

Speaking to AIN before the opening ceremony, Lyra noted that education is part of the Aviation Partnership signed by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and U.S. President Obama. To explain the importance of Embry-Riddle’s return to aviation education in Brazil, he compared it with the creation of ITA (Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica), Brazil’s premier aeronautic engineering university, which was formed through cooperation between the Brazilian Air Force’s CTA and M.I.T.

Lyra’s eventual ambition is what he described as a “University of the Air”, associated with an airport, where students can serve internships, to learn “to do it in real life.” Catarina Business Airport is one possible home for the University of the Air, but he has also spoken with Sorocaba, and said there had been strong interest from São José dos Campos as well.