Expat pilots poised to outnumber Indian counterparts

Mumbai: Expatriate pilots are increasingly becoming a part of India’s aviation industry and are poised to outnumber their Indian counterparts.
“An aircraft like, say, a Boeing 777-200 LR would need about 11 pilots for optimum aircraft utilisation, while a four-seater Cessna 172 could do with two pilots,” says an airline official. Accordingly, it can be safely estimated that the 138 aircraft would need at least 1,380 pilots.
The situation has been like this for some time now. In 2005, 162 pilot licences were issued in India while 99 aircraft were registered, while in 2004 the number of licences issued was 159 as against the 60 aircraft registered.
Civil aviation minister Praful Patel recently spoke of a demand for 2,500 pilots in the near future. With the present rate, India would take at least 7 to 10 years to meet that figure. Says Sean Butler, director, sales and marketing, Parc Aviation, a leading flight crew leasing company: “Analysts estimate that there will be a need for 8,000 pilots by 2020.”
Interestingly, foreign pilots also fill the gap that the highly-in-demand Indian pilots refuse to. “With so many Boeings and Airbuses around, Indian pilots don’t want to fly ATRs, and so we have foreign pilots fill in the vacancies,” says Capt G Gopinath of Air Deccan.
Those owning private aircraft too have begun recruiting foreign pilots in full force.
04/01/07 Manju V/Times of India