Jet, Deccan may spike plans for flight schools

Mumbai: The turbulence in the domestic aviation industry has forced two leading airlines to rethink plans to set up training academies for pilots and aircraft engineers.
Jet Airways (India) Ltd and Deccan Aviation Ltd, which runs Simplifly Deccan, had planned the facilities to fill gaps in their staffing needs when they were expanding operations.
But with domestic airlines facing a combined loss of $2 billion (Rs8,540 crore) in fiscal 2009, because of spiralling jet fuel prices and excess flights in the local market, these airlines are trimming both staff size and routes.
“Three years back, India needed an additional 2,000 pilots by 2010. Now, I would imagine the country is in excess of pilots,” said an aviation expert, who has been tracking the industry for about two decades.
“There are more pilots than necessary now because airlines are grounding their flights and rationalizing routes. Already, domestic airlines have asked their foreign pilots to go back,” he added.
Chief executive Wolfgang Prock-Schauer said over phone from Europe, “It is too premature to comment about that. There are various other things deciding the fate of this project.”
Jet Airways, which had consolidated losses of Rs653.87 crore in fiscal 2008, was in talks with Brussels-based Sabena Flight Academy for a possible tie-up, and was scouting for land in Mumbai and some southern cities to set up a facility for training about 200 candidates a year.
Deccan Aviation, which was taken over last year by Kingfisher Airlines Ltd’s owner UB Group, had planned to establish a residential training centre at Bangalore by December 2007, at an estimated cost of Rs65 crore.
Private training institutes not run by airlines claim they are faring better.
“More candidates are enrolling with our academy, irrespective of the change in the scene,” said S.M.A. Salam, director (training) with Yash Air Ltd, an aviation training centre based in Indore. “Though there’s no dramatic growth in the number of aspiring pilots, there is no slippage either,” he added.
12/07/08 P. R. Sanjai/Livemint