The school where fake pilots trained

Jaipur/New Delhi: With two more pilots being arrested in Jaipur for submitting fake documents to get their flying licences, the government is slowly waking up to a thriving racket in Rajasthan that churns out fake pilots.
The Rajasthan Flying School, operating from two tiny rooms inside the Jaipur airport since the last thirty years, has been quietly fudging records to enable students to procure pilot licences.
It was finally forced to shut shop in 2008 because the aircraft that it owned was grounded.
The Rajasthan Anti-Corruption Bureau, though, only recently stumbled upon this startling fact after the arrest of the two pilots, Amit Mundra and Ajay Chaudhary, who are on paper, trainees of the 2005 batch of the Rajasthan Flying Club.
After the initial probe, it was found that the Chief Flying Instructor of the school took money from students to fudge records of their flying hours.
This ensured that the flying school saved money on fuel, earned bribes and the students got their licenses faster.
“Officials of the school took bribes from students. Each of us paid Rs. 3.5 lakh”, said Chaudhary, who worked with Spice Jet and had faked flying hours to operate commercial flights.
So, while trainees are required to have a minimum experience of 250 flying hours to avail a licence, at least 13 pilots trained here flew only 40-50 hours.
Investigators also found that these students, in records, were flying even on days when the school’s aircraft was grounded for maintenance work.
24/03/11 NDTV.com

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