Cadettes at the JAT Flight Academy in Vršac, 1985. Opened in 1954, the JAT Flight Academy had become one of Europe’s largest training centres for pilots and other aviation personnel by the end of the 1980s. By 1985, it had trained generations of highly skilled professionals for JAT, including 220 commercial pilots, 22 flight engineers and two classes of cabin crew. It had also trained eight classes of flight instructors and 150 instructors in gliding, parachuting and powered flight for the Aeronautical Association of Yugoslavia. The academy began training foreign aviation personnel in 1976, and by the mid-1980s, around 500 pilots and aircraft mechanics from 25 countries had passed through its programmes. They included trainees from Indonesia, Myanmar, Yemen, Kenya, Mali, Tunisia, Algeria, Angola, Guinea, Sudan, Egypt, Libya, Greece and Turkey