Flying schools take off, but pilots will still be scarce

Bangalore: It’s simple arithmetic. Over the next ten years, airlines will take delivery of around 400 aircraft and each of them would require 10 pilots and double that number of engineers. This means there would be additional demand for around 4,000 pilots and 8,000 engineers.
This is just for basic flight training. There is also type-rating and recurrent simulator training. The potential in these two are also immense. Not to forget, pilot demand for corporate and cargo jets, and flight training.
These numbers have excited many companies enough to announce plans to launch flying schools. To name a few: there is former telecom czar Rajeev Chandrasekhar’s ambitious project in partnership with EADS, which would churn out 500 ab-initio (commercial pilot licence – CPL) pilots and 1,000 flight engineers every year from mid-2009 onwards. Canada’s CAE has also drawn up plans for a $20-million flight simulation training centre that would produce 1,000 pilots per year.
Then, there are smaller firms like Nova Aviation Services, which has chalked out plans for setting up a flying school in Mumbai to train 90 pilots and 90 engineers in a year.
Though SpiceJet has made provisions for the 90 additional pilots it would need this year, it has no clue from where it will meet its requirement of 120 pilots next year and 140 pilots thereafter.
“The problem is not so much at the first officer level. We can easily train them overseas in a year-and-a-half and recruit. The shortage is at the commander level, where you need 4-5 years of experience. This is being filled up by foreign pilots,” said J S Dhillon, SpiceJet executive vice-president, flight operations.
“Today, 20% of our pilots are expats. This could rise to 30% next year,” said Dhillon.
Promoter of ground training school Clipair’s S N Dutta laments; “A lot many more pilots can be trained if the training environment is made friendlier. DGCA has amended rules in August this year to make it compulsory for a student to fly 50 hours before taking the CPL ground tests. One does not understand the rationale behind this.”
13/02/07 Praveena Sharma/Daily News & Analysis