After it was discovered that a number of retired British pilots had trained the People’s Liberation Army ( PLA ) in China two years ago, they were prohibited from re-entering the country’s defense sector.
The planes were among those from the United States, Europe, South Africa and South America who served in a flight education class in Guyuan, Ningxia, China, according to the UK-based Livingston Aerospace Ltd, which was sanctioned by the US in July this year.  ,
A Livingston Aerospace director who requested anonymity in an exclusive interview with Asia Times sought to clarify the company’s contentious operate in China.
The director stated that” Test Flying Academy of South Africa” has always been the focus of the job. It would be “business development and project management for counts involving check flying in and for China,” I would say.
” Establishing a exam captain school in China, which was a huge undertaking, and it was all going very well until Covid struck,” he said, “was the biggest thing that took up most of the time.” ” The class was located in a few places, mostly close to the Guyuan check base, close toXi’an. We had about 10 teachers and 100 individuals go through”.
He claimed that the individuals were all in their late 20s and early 30s and had all flown for a while. He claimed that some kids were excellent while the rest were merely subpar.  ,
He said,” The school is all about teaching them how to be effective test pilots.” They continue to work as analyze pilots, according to the statement. I’ve got no idea where they went. It’s no portion of our information”.
He said the 15-month-long trip testing program included a hundred hours of flying 40 different types of jets, plus scientists, communicating and review writing. He claimed that test pilots are crucial for any aircraft’s protection and certification.
He claimed that Livingston Aerospace was informed that the PLA would be using its aircraft testing methods at the time. However, he claimed that flight testing is a totally different subject from what TFASA was doing, which is training military personnel who are operating with methods, tactics, and procedures.
He remarked,” Nothing was teaching anything that would compromise the interests of our friends and colleagues who stayed in the Royal Air Force.” ” We’re not giving away techniques. There’s nothing that was being taught that’s hardly applicable online anyway”.
The professional frequencies, transmitted powers, and other such things are what are important. Even if we as a captain knew that, it’s of very little price, unless you have the engineering background to put it into practice”.
The governments of the UK and the US had opposed each other when they accused TFASA, Livingston Aerospace, and 18 other organizations of using American and NATO solutions to train Chinese military aircraft.  ,
The punishment
Up to 30 former UK military pilots went to China’s PLA aircrew training, according to the UK Ministry of Defense ( MoD ) in October 2022, making the incident public.  ,
A MoD spokesman claimed that although the aircraft ‘ education and recruitment did not violate any existing British law, leaders in the UK and other nations were attempting to stop it.
In June 2023, the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security ( BIS ) added 16 companies to its Entity List and said that these firms had trained PLA pilots.  ,
TFASA, Frontier Services Group, AVIC International Flight Training Academy ( AIFA ), and Chinese Flight Test Establishment ( also known as the Shaanxi-based AVIC Flight Test Center ) are among the organizations that have been sanctioned.  ,
In July this time, four more firms, including Livingston Aerospace, which is owned by former British military aircraft Craig Penrice, were sanctioned because of their connections to TFASA.  ,
According to BAE Systems ‘ website, Penrice flew the agency’s advanced military instructor, especially Hawk, as well as the F-15 for the US Air Force, and did his evaluation captain instruction with the US Navy in the 1980s.
At BAE Systems, he then began working on the Eurofighter Typhoon‘s growth. In 1996, he was the first RAF aircraft to fly the warrior, which is manufactured by a collaboration of Airbus, BAE Systems and Leonardo, and remains the world’s most innovative swing-role combat aviation as of now.  ,
According to his LinkedIn profile, Penrice served as an aircraft administrative assistant from 1998 to 2013 and an export consultant for the UK Ministry of Defense from 1980 to 1998. In 2013, he founded Livingston Aerospace.
According to a spokesperson for Livingston Aerospace, the company has been talking about starting a journey tests school in China with its Chinese counterparts since 2014. Before the school opened the same year, he claimed, the firm and TFASA had already agreed to a five-year support agreement.  ,
” People were trained as exam planes at the Chinese university. They flew away and did some useful check flying, and some of them returned. We taught them to be educators”, the director said.
He claimed that according to some “horrible” quarantine regulations in China, Livingston had failed to attract people after the epidemic broke out in 2020, leading to the cancellation of the agreement in early 2022.  ,
When we eventually terminated the contract, he said, “it was those people who were good enough to be the professors who took over the school.” We’ve given them adequate experience and training to begin training their individual employees, which was always the contract’s goal.
He claimed that until its British business bank account was frozen in April 2024, Livingston had been receiving a small sum of money for providing the class with some “documentation that needed to be completed.” He said the business doesn’t work now and is being liquidated.  ,
Interesting fees ,
The UK’s MoD said in October 2022 that some British pilots who trained the PLA-Air Force were paid up to £237, 911 ($ 270, 000 ) a year.
In September 2023, then UK Defense Secretary Grant Shapps cited the newly established National Security Act as saying,” Anyone found to be acting against the UK’s interests by training our competitors ‘ forces can now expect to be pursued and brought to justice.”  ,
Livingston’s director said the number of the accused UK aircraft was “hugely overblown” and should be less than 10.  ,
He claimed that the English security services had warned the company last year that if it continued to operate in China, it would face legal risk as a result of the new Act.  ,
He said,” These guys were getting paid not to go and fly in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or Kuwait, all of which have got Typhoon airplanes,” making a comment about the pilots ‘ annual salaries of up to £237, 911.
These are not pleasant spots to go and work, they say. So you have to compensate for the suffering, suffering, and everything in between,” he said. ” And for us or TFASA to attract people, you had to give similar or better pay”.
He claimed that the general public may not be happy with the actions of these British pilots in China, but they have already experienced the consequences.
They are unable to find valuable work in the UK. They didn’t enter the Air Force. They can’t meet any security company. They’ve been banned from a lot of spots”, he said, adding that he would not go to the US as Washington’s analysis of TFASA is definitely still continued.  ,
Intelligence cause
Following constitutional changes in the UK, TFASA announced in a speech on June 5 that it had decided to end all employment for UK citizens. It claimed it had never purposefully searched for ex-service members of NATO nations to headhunt them.
” TFASA seemed to be the focus of all this activity. It’s no Livingston Aerospace…It’s TFASA that the US officials want to thwart”, said Livingston Aerospace’s director.  ,
The discussion proceeds without making sense of this reasoning. People in the UK and the US were training Taiwanese Air Force, Army, and Navy planes, he said, which irritates them. There were a lot of other American citizens working on the more controversial part, which was operational training for the Foreign military.
He added that all the planes involved had a very thorough understanding of China’s aircraft capabilities, allowing them to actually provide their brains back to their home countries.
What could be a better source of knowledge than having your members fly with “your attack”? What better understanding of their skills can you obtain from having your planes fly in their regiments? he asked. ” And what’s happening now is that you’ve shot everything down and lost that crucial intelligence link.”
Nevertheless, he did not verify whether any captain has passed brains to the UK and US institutions.  ,
The Asia Times has Yong Jian as a source. He is a Chinese columnist who specializes in Chinese technologies, economy and politics.  ,
Read: US restrictions firms for teaching PLA aircraft in S Africa