Flying schools take off, but pilots will still be scarce

BANGALORE: It’s simple arithmetic. Over the next ten years, airlines will take delivery of around 400 aircraft and each of them would require 10 pilots and double that number of engineers. This means there would be additional demand for around 4,000 pilots and 8,000 engineers.

This is just for basic flight training. There is also type-rating and recurrent simulator training. The potential in these two are also immense. Not to forget, pilot demand for corporate and cargo jets, and flight training.

These numbers have excited many companies enough to announce plans to launch flying schools. To name a few: there is former telecom czar Rajeev Chandrasekhar’s ambitious project in partnership with EADS, which would churn out 500 ab-initio (commercial pilot licence - CPL) pilots and 1,000 flight engineers every year from mid-2009 onwards. Canada’s CAE has also drawn up plans for a $20-million flight simulation training centre that would produce 1,000 pilots per year.

Then, there are smaller firms like Nova Aviation Services, which has chalked out plans for setting up a flying school in Mumbai to train 90 pilots and 90 engineers in a year. It is now looking for the right aircraft and a partner with land next to an airstrip. 

“Aircraft for pilot training are not available for immediate delivery. We want to procure Cessna but we can’t get it before one year. So, we will settle for Austria’s Diamond,” says Nova Aviation Services Ltd’s Hosi Charna.

Nova Aviation wants to get its plans off the ground by mid-2008 so that the first batch of pilots is out by 2009.

Jupiter Aviation CEO and managing director S Ravi Narayanan is also shopping for helicopter and trainer aircraft.  “We will give both helicopter and aircraft training. For helicopter, we have zeroed in on Eurocopter’s EC 120 and for the aircraft training, we will use TB10 and TB 20,” says Narayanan.

But even as they get down to putting their plans into action, the pilot problem is not about to disappear soon.

At least, that is what the airlines feel. Take the case of budget carrier SpiceJet Ltd. Though it has made provisions for the 90 additional pilots it would need this year, it has no clue from where it will meet its requirement of 120 pilots next year and 140 pilots thereafter.

“The problem is not so much at the first officer level. We can easily train them overseas in a year-and-a-half and recruit. The shortage is at the commander level, where you need 4-5 years of experience. This is being filled up by foreign pilots,” said J S Dhillon, SpiceJet executive vice-president, flight operations.

“Today, 20% of our pilots are expats. This could rise to 30% next year. The number will keep rising for another 3-4 years before easing. By then, our current crop of co-pilots will be ready to captain flights,” said Dhillon.

And by the time Dhillon’s co-pilots graduate to flight commanders, the new flying institute would be ready with cadets to fill up the position of first officers.

But not everyone is optimistic. Promoter of ground training school Clipair’s S N Dutta laments; “A lot many more pilots can be trained if the training environment is made friendlier. DGCA has amended rules in August this year to make it compulsory for a student to fly 50 hours before taking the CPL ground tests. One does not understand the rationale behind this. There is no point in undergoing expensive flight training before passing the CPL papers. If a student does not pass after completing 50 hours of flying, the entire expense is a waste. It is a national waste.”