A Flying School at Shannon Airport offers a helicopter training course.
A helicopter course does not come cheap, costing £2,200 and a three-seater Hughes helicopter can cost up to £11,000.
Just as there are driving schools for cars in Dublin and Limerick and elsewhere, so there’s a helicopter driving school at Shannon airport, the first in Ireland.
The Hughes 300 helicopter is being assembled at Shannon where since 1966 £1 million worth of the aircraft have been sold
In response to demand, Transworld Helicopters set up a training school to teach people to fly them at Shannon airport. In the classroom, trainee pilots are provided with scenarios and the trainer instructs them on the best technical course of action.
Cathal O’Shannon asks some of the students why they are learning to fly a helicopter. Personal satisfaction, employment possibilities, travel opportunities, and earning potential are just some of the reasons provided.
Every day during the course the students learn the theory of flight and navigation and other subjects in the classroom, and every day weather permitting they do their practical work in the helicopters themselves.
The total flying time while learning to fly can amount to between 75 and 100 hours.
He has to learn navigation, airmanship, theory of flight, engines, radio telephony, navigation by radio means, meteorology...
The course is designed to prepare students to get a commercial license but does not guarantee one.
Cathal O’Shannon gets a chance to take to the skies in his first practical lesson at flying a helicopter.
A ‘Newsbeat’ report broadcast on 4 April 1967. The reporter is Cathal O’Shannon.