Jharkhand flying school to take wings in August

Jamshedpur: In its maiden venture to hand over joysticks to youths from remote areas, the Jharkhand state government has formed a co-operative society for commercial pilot training.
To realise its goal, the government has even decided to bear the costs — about Rs 15 lakh per trainee — for 30 out of the 150 students to be admitted in the two centres in Jamshedpur and Dumka.
The government has already allotted Rs 5 crore in this year’s budget to establish Jamshedpur Co-operative Flying School, which will come up on a five-acre plot at Sonari airport. The centre in Dumka is under construction.
Officials at Jamshedpur Co-operative Flying School said two aircraft from the US would be acquired for training. Having already placed orders for the consignment, they are waiting for final release of funds to get the aircraft so as to start the institute in August.
“We are buying two Cessna 172 from the US. We have two defunct Pushpak aircraft, which will be renovated soon to offer training to a large number of aspirants simultaneously,” said Prashant Singh, one of the board directors of the flying school.
All the aircraft would shuttle between Jamshedpur and Dumka — a 40-minute one-way journey — to impart training to wannabes at both the places.
Each of the students would need 200 hours of flying experience to be eligible for getting a commercial pilot licence. With one flying hour costing about Rs 6,000-7,000 — depending on the price of aviation turbine fuel — a student would have to shell out not less than Rs 12 lakh to get licence for commercial flying.
Girls aspiring to become airhostess can also join the flying school but the government would not fund them.
Both the flying schools would have a hostel and staff quarters, with the airhostess training being confined to the steel city initially.
The response to the two flying schools would help the co-operative society to sanction funds for setting up more such institutes across the state.
20/05/08 Saswati Mukherjee/The Telegraph