Flight International online news 09:00 GMT: India’s Government has revealed the extent of the country’s pilot shortage on its state-owned airlines and detailed measures it is taking to address the problem.
Civil aviation minister Praful Patel told parliament that flag carrier Air India is currently short 118 pilots while Alliance Air, a subsidiary of fellow state-owned carrier Indian Airlines, is short 40 pilots.
All state-owned and privately held airlines in India are suffering from a severe shortage of pilots caused by rapid growth in the sector amid the establishment of new low-fare carriers and the expansion of operations by existing players.
The shortage has led to poaching of pilots by new airlines and forced many airlines to slow aggressive expansion plans. Recently launched Air India subsidiary Air India Express, for example, was recently forced to scale back its operations after several of its pilots quit without giving notice, presumably to join other airlines.
Patel said the government is “taking steps to overcome [the] shortage of pilots” and has changed the commercial pilot retirement age to 61 from 60 while reducing the total flying time required for the issue of a commercial pilot’s licence to 200hrs from 250hrs.
In addition, said Patel, government-owned pilot training schools are being expanded and a new flying training institute is being set up. The Government also recently organised a meeting of the country’s airlines in a bid to have a code of conduct drawn up that would bar poaching, but Patel told parliament that “no code of conduct could be finalised by the airlines”.
Source: Flight International
