Probe into fake pilot licences reaches Manila

New Delhi: The scare created by fake pilots among flyers has forced the government to crack the whip on substandard pilots who could endanger air safety. The aviation ministry is now weighing if it should disallow licences of Indians who train as co-pilots from flying schools in countries with dubious track record. If this comes about, these students won’t be able to get their foreign commercial pilot licences (CPL) converted to Indian ones and not be eligible to fly for any desi carrier.
Action on this front has already begun, albeit in a different way. The DGCA has detected anomalies in the records of students coming from many flying schools in the Philippines. A team sent there last year reportedly found some schools which issued log books certifying that their students had flown the required number of hours to become co-pilots in a certain aircraft did not even have those types of planes in their fleet!
“Philippines itself is checking these institutes…” sources said.
24/03/11 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India