Support flying clubs to ensure supply of trained pilots

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: The government has been talking about a civil aviation policy since the late 1990s. A draft policy was posted on the government website in 2001, to which the Confederation of Indian Industry had given a lot of feedback. In fact, at one meeting with the industry four years ago, the civil aviation minister had actually said that the policy would be out in a week. But, the policy is yet to see the light of the day.

There are two crucial aspects— neglected areas actually—which the government needs to seriously address in the policy: flying clubs and infrastructure, including regulatory aspects and airport modernisation. Let’s take these two issues one at a time.

In India, there are 23-26 flying clubs at present. Unfortunately, except for a couple of them, most are more or less defunct. Even the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Udaan Academy, which was set up in partnership with state-owned airlines, has a flying rate far less than required.

At a time, when Indian airline companies have announced plans to purchase as many as 400 aircraft in the next couple of years, the country does not have enough crew to fly them. The rule of thumb is every aircraft needs a crew strength of 4.5, or nine pilots. So, with 400 aircraft, we need at least 3,600 pilots. The government must support the flying clubs to ensure the supply of trained pilots. Otherwise, airline companies will have little choice but pay through their nose to get expat pilots.

Again, to expedite the availability of commercial pilots, the government relaxed the requirement of number of flying hours to 200 from 250 hours earlier. While this is fine, it definitely raises some questions about the adequacy of training. At 250 hours, we were very much close to the international norms on number of flying hours required for getting a licence.

Abroad, a person can obtain a commercial pilot licence in just about five months. In India, it takes almost two years.