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Air India searches high and low for qualified pilots in vain

Re-advertises its requirement for 197 commander and senior trainee pilots

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State-owned carrier Air India (AI), which began its recruitment process recently, is finding it hard to get the right kind of candidates, compelling it to re-advertise its requirement for 197 commander and senior trainee pilots.

A spokesperson of the national flag carrier said there were just not enough qualified candidates available in the market.

"We had to re-advertise because we were not able to get the right kind of people in the first instance," he said.

Besides scouting for commanders and senior trainer pilots (P2) for its narrow body A320 aircraft, the government-run airline is also looking for 800 cabin crews.

The ad posted on the AI's website says it wanted to recruit commanders with 500 hours of pilot-in-command (PIC) endorsement, Indian airline transport pilot licence (ATPL) awarded by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and someone who had flown on A320 family aircraft in the last 12 months.

The airline is looking to hire the commanders and senior trainee pilots on a five-year contract, which would be extended for another five years on satisfactory performance 
For senior trainee pilots, the airline has kept a cut-off age limit of 35 years and states that the total training cost would be borne by the selected candidate and would be recovered from his salary in EMI during the contract period.

The company spokesperson said these vacancies were created due to older employees retiring and some of them quitting due to various reasons.

"We have to fill up these vacancies but are finding it difficult to find rightly qualified candidates for them," he said.

The state-owned airline has undertaken restructuring and rationalisation of its operations to improve its performance to wipe out the huge losses of over Rs 30,000 crore accumulated over the years.

The airline has been inducting new aircraft at a frenetic pace after it started taking deliveries of the 27 Boeing B787 Dreamliners, for which it had placed order in 2007 along with 41 B777s and B737-800s.

The B787 Dreamliners began joining AI's fleet since 2012, and till now it has taken deliveries of 19 aircraft and the remaining eight will be inducted by 2016-17.

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