The Air Charter Association is launching Level 1 of its brand new broker qualification programme. The series of three training modules will lead to an advanced level qualification, and Level 1 foundation training is taking place at the Royal Air Force Club in London.

The agenda covers the fundamentals of becoming a broker and handling charter requests. These include such important issues as the Montreal Convention, freedoms of the air and cabotage, US charter parts, operator documentation, passenger documentation and, an issue of increasing importance in recent years, illegal charters. This aspect of the training alone makes the qualification of utmost importance as there have been examples of new and unskilled brokers arranging illegal charters without realising what they are doing.

Broker training will also be the main topic of a future episode of The Air Charter podcast. Since its launch in August, the podcast has been downloaded more than 1,000 times and has been listened to as far afield as Venezuela, India, Saudi Arabia, China, Korea and New Zealand. The training episode will no doubt further extend the number of listeners and the global reach of the podcast.

“We are very pleased at the level of interest the broker qualification programme is receiving,” comments chairman Nick Weston. “The feedback so far has been that no such programme has existed before. The three step training programme particularly benefits new and younger brokers by giving them a qualification that demonstrates their understanding and knowledge of best industry practices.”