NEW DELHI: India’s rapidly growing civil aviation sector is facing an acute shortage of trained pilots, particularly for wide-bodied passenger jetliners, and nearly 5,000 more pilots may be needed over the next five years.

“Considering the present growth of the aviation industry, it has been estimated that in the next five years 5,000 additional pilots would be required for scheduled operations and 1,000 pilots for non-scheduled and private operations,” Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel said.

The crunch is also being faced by the public sector carrier, Air India, forcing it to temporarily withdraw the Kolkata-London flight which was operated by Boeing 777 aircraft.

“All our scheduled flights are being operated and no other flight has been affected due to non-availability of commanders. All efforts are being made to get pilots and commanders to operate 777 aircraft,” Air India’s spokesperson told The Hindu here on Friday.

Air India has put two B-777-200 Long Range aircraft each on its non-stop flights to the U.S. from Delhi and Mumbai, while the fifth B-777 is being kept as a back-up aircraft. Air India has eight brand new B-777 aircraft and two more will join its fleet by August. The airline also has four B-777 leased aircraft and has to cough up a huge amount every month as lease. Even if one aircraft gets grounded due to lack of commanders, the carrier stands to lose a substantial amount every month.

The spokesman said that Air India was expediting the pace of training of pilots and three Captains were turning out every month to fly B-777 aircraft. The carrier has also recently sent a batch of 25 young pilots for training to flying schools in the U.S.

While the shortage is for “type rated” pilots, fast growth of civil aviation sector has also witnessed a boom in youngsters flocking to the flight training schools in America, South Asia, Canada and U.K. and paying on an average Rs. 20-25 lakhs for training as a pilot. Industry sources said Commercial Pilot License (CPL) holders would be available in plenty in the country over the next year.

On their return they have to clear the radio transmission and telephony test of the Communications Ministry, and pass a composite test by the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). It takes another two years before they can fly as co-pilots either on single-aisle jets or ATRs.

The lure of the high-flying career can be gauged from the fact that Air India received nearly 800 applications about five months ago when it advertised for trainee pilots. The airline employs nearly 800 pilots out of which 117 are foreigners.

The civil aviation sector employs about 2,500 pilots of which about 900 are foreigners and about five per cent are above 60 years and are from the U.S.

Private carriers such as Jet Airways employs about 100 foreign pilots, IndiGo has 84 foreigners as pilots and Paramount Airways has 11, while cargo carrier Blue Dart has 10 foreign pilots, according to the Civil Aviation Ministry.

Retirement age:
The retirement age for pilots has been pushed to 65 years and other steps to reduce the demand-supply gap include upgradation of the infrastructure at the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Udan Akademi in Rae Bareli, U.P. to increase its training capacity from 40 to 100 pilots and setting up of a training institute at Gondia, Maharashtra.

Some of the senior commanders told The Hindu that despite an unwritten “no-poaching” pact among airlines in the country as many as 31 pilots left JetLite, formerly Air Sahara, and now acquired by Jet Airways as its low-cost arm, over the past two months, and joined Kingfisher Airlines, which is an on a expansion spree after its promoter Vijay Mallya acquired a stake in Air Deccan.

“All these pilots who were operating Boeing 737 will be able to fly wide bodied jets like A-340 after a brief spell of training on simulators. The same pool of trained pilots could have been available to Air India for its B-777 fleet as it would have required just four sessions on simulators. As a majority of pilots are on contracts, there is no question of overtaking anyone’s seniority,” industry sources said.

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