Air India Express looking to hire ex-IAF pilots
Mumbai: Air India Express, the no-frills international arm of debt-laden Air India, has said it would soon ink an agreement with the Indian Air Force to train the pilots, besides netting the early IAF retirees into the airline as it struggles to get quality senior pilots.
“As we continue to face severe shortage of senior pilots, which is impacting our operations and hurting our growth, we have decided to join hands with the Air Force to get trained pilots from them,” a top Air India Express official told PTI over phone from Kochi, where the airline is headquartered.
08/08/11 PTI/Economic Times
Sir,
I don’t think this is a good decision by the AIE. You must look in a long run like AI when pilots have tremendous loyalty towards the airlines and continue to fly, in spite of slow career advancement, as long as monetary needs are taken care of. The AIE has suffered tremendously suffered due to mistake of previous MOU with the IAF in which AIE training Dep had to focus for over three yrs on old fighter stream IAF pilots to qualify/authorise them to fly as commander. Few even after spending over 3 yrs not in position to fly as commander and few because of their lapses made to airlines busier in resolving the issues.
In my opinion it would be advantageous to take fresh CPL holders who are versatile and have better grasping capability. And of course IGRUA campus will be best where no fudging of hrs/exam and it’s best recognizes by the DGCA….
I agree with Captain Aarkesh Gupta. IGRUA is known for its capability of training the best pilots but still airlines are not considering the young cadets.why?