Extreme Pilot Shortage-An Opportunity Unparalleled

In 2005 India’s aviation sector was freed of bureaucratic shackles and stifling Govt restrictions & the industry is now poised to expand by leaps and bounds.
At present, existing private domestic carriers as well as the new startups have a total of 337 aircraft on order, mostly Boeing and Airbus variants and some ATR and Embraer aircraft.
Not to be left behind, the national carriers have also planned substantial acquisitions. Air India has finalised a revised fleet plan through which its fleet size would be enhanced from the present level of 34 aircraft to 74 aircraft by the year 2012-13. This entails purchase of 50 aircraft from Boeing (8 Boeing 777-200LR, 15 Boeing 777-300ER and 27 Boeing 787s) at a projected cost of Rs 30000 crore (US$ 7 billion).
Acquisition of 43 aircraft (19 Airbus A319, 4 Airbus A320 and 20 Airbus A321) along with related spares, spare engines, equipment, etc has since been approved for Indian Airlines at a total cost of Rs 9700 crore (US$2.2 billion).
It is anyone’s guess as to Human Resource requirements, especially pilots , airhostesses, flight attendants and other cabin crew, that are going to come up in the Aviation Sector. Demand is much above the number of people acquiring training for the same. Jet Airways along with Sahara India has about 47 percent share of the domestic aviation market, followed by Indian Airlines (28 per cent), Air Deccan (11 per cent), Kingfisher (6 per cent) and SpiceJet (5 per cent) as on October2006.
Jet Airways tops the list of domestic and national carrier operators with 8,168 flights operating till June 2005. Indian Airlines ranks second with 7,562 flights, followed by Sahara (3,225 flights), Air Deccan (2,889 flights), Spice Jet (483 flights) and Kingfisher Airlines (267 flights).
The sudden boom in Indian aviation has caught even the normally market savvy global aerospace manufacturers unawares. Recently, both Boeing and Airbus said they had underestimated Indian growth. This means global players are also coming into the scene.
It wasn’t surprising since statistics compiled by Airbus Industrie showed that Indian carriers accounted for 327 out of the 2,140 firm orders for new aircraft that were placed with it and rival Boeing in 2005. This does not take into account the orders placed for smaller airplanes with other manufacturers like ATR and Dassault – which, too, are flooded with offers from private Indian carriers.
20/04/07 Sristys Aviation/PRLog.Org (press release), Romania