Abdullah Al-Sayed, founder and chairman of ambitious Saudi Arabian flight operations services specialist Nexus, visited ABACE 2016 this week to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with a Chinese company to establish an aviation training company.

“We signed an MoU on Tuesday with a Chinese general aviation operator, to establish a Nexus Aviation College in Xinjiang province, western China,” Lydia Sheng, Nexus business development director, told AIN. She was accompanying Al-Sayed on a tour of the ABACE show.

The college will offer a broad range of courses across the aviation spectrum, including ATC, flight training, maintenance, dispatch/ground handling and cabin crew, said Sheng. “It is mainly to support the general aviation (GA) industry in China, as the sector has huge potential,” she added. “There is a serious lack of infrastructure and the [Chinese] government is looking to make GA a pillar of the economy by 2020.”

Sheng said that Nexus and its JV partner had been “working closely with the provincial government. We aim to finish the joint-venture agreement in the third quarter and hopefully operate the college from the start of 2017.” The college will be set up by Nexus subsidiary Wyvern Aviation Services, she added, and will be probably be called Nexus Aviation College China. “We have not worked out all the details yet,” Sheng admitted.

“In China, we are also looking to start our flight operations services–we already have a flight operations services center opening in Manila [in the Philippines] in June with 60 staff.” Sheng also said, “We are in discussions with another Chinese company about a joint venture for flight operations here. This could happen even faster [than the college].”