Training costs up to Rs one crore, still 7,000 pilots jobless

Flying in the air with a starting salary of two lakh per month. Sounds interesting? But the reality is that today some of the pilots are in search of other careers.

A newspaper mentioned the story of one Deepak Malik who trained as a pilot at a cost of Rs 35 lakh in a private aviation academy. Today he is a ground staff drawing a salary of Rs 25,000 in a chartered helicopter company. Some of Deepak’s batch mates are even working in call centres.

Deepak is not alone. Last week Air India denied jobs to fifty trainee pilots because they could not pass the psychometric test. Seven thousand pilots have formed the Unemployed Pilot Association. They are demanding better policies from the government.

The real reason for refusing the fifty ‘newbie’ pilots was this: A top official of Air India told a newsperson, “After pilots obtain their Commercial Pilot License (CPL) , they have to be trained for type rating training (i.e. training for flying Boeing, Airbus or ATR aircraft). This costs Air India Rs 35 lakh per pilot per aeroplane. So, we prefer to select trained type- rated pilots and not trainee pilots.”

So trainee pilots have undergo a type of ‘post graduation’ training at 35 lakh more type rating training to land a job

But there are about 450 such ‘type rated trained pilots’, still jobless. Why? Each airline has aeroplanes of different designs and specifications. For example, Indigo and Air Asia have only Airbus, Jet and Spicejet possess Boeing, and Jetlite mainly ATRs. A type rated Airbus pilot is not eligible for jobs in Jet, Jetlite or Spicejet.

Director General Civil Aviation (DGCA)  (Licensing) says, “Becoming a pilot isn’t easy today. Only rich people can bear the training expenditure.” An ex-commander mentions that passion of becoming pilot among youth started growing up in 2005-06 when economy was at its peak. New airlines company Jet, Indigo, Kingfisher, Spice jet and others started coming up in India. At the time pilots were not available in such numbers to meet the demands of airlines. Airlines just looked for CPL and not experience.

But in the last eight years twelve airlines have been shut down. Kingfisher overtook Air Deccan but Kingfisher closed down in 2012. It resulted in the loss of job. Due to this increased competition for job other airlines companies are hiring these employees offering less salary.

Convenor of Unemployed Pilots Association Captain Ashok Arya says, “Government should take the psychometric test at the time of student pilot license test. It will ensure that only those candidates can obtain CPL and PPL who are already mentally fit for the job. Today more than 25,000 posts are vacant in Air Traffic Control (ATC). Government can recruit the pilots here. On other side many pilots of our association are applying for the post of Coast Guard. There are fifteen to fifty contenders for one post.”

[This feature was prepared by Ravi Ranjan Kumar]

  Director General Civil Aviation (DGCA), interns, Pilots, Unemployed Pilots