Trainee pilots flirt with death

Mumbai: It’s been a bad year for Indians training to be pilots abroad. Never before have so many died in the span of a year, during training. Despite the growing number of such accidents, there is no official record of the deaths with any Indian agency.
What accounts for the increasing number of Indian trainee pilots meeting with accidents abroad? To begin with, the number of students going abroad for flying training is at an unprecedented high. According to statistics available with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, the number of Indian students who converted their foreign licences to Indian ones went up from 49 in 2005 to over 70 in 2006. The number is slated to cross 250 this year. “Actually, over 1,000 Indians students are training abroad currently. Licence conversion can take about a year in some cases and so the low official figures,” says a DGCA official.
A Delhi-based ground training instructor points out that for a majority of Indian students, the cost of training is often the sole deciding factor when it comes to choosing a flying school.
In India, schools charge between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 20 lakh. But students prefer to choose the low-end packages abroad. “Since these packages include the prohibitive cost of living abroad, they compromise on the training,” says the instructor, adding that the dearth of flying instructors is also responsible.
09/11/07 Manju V/Times of India