Many a dream of flying high has crashed

Bangalore: With the aviation industry in a recession, hundreds of young men who spent lakhs of rupees to undergo courses to become commercial pilots are unemployed and broke.
A course culminating in a commercial pilot’s licence (CPL) could cost upto Rs 30-40 lakh in flying schools in India and abroad and nearly 7,000 pilots are without jobs, as airlines facing increased fuel costs and fewer customers have shed aircraft and routes, and more importantly staff, including pilots.
That has turned the of many aspiring pilots to dust, landing them in a debt trap, with many landed with huge loans from banks. To get a CPL, aspirants have to put in 250 hours of flying and class hours in a process that can stretch to three years, if not more. While the basic training would cost over Rs 20 lakh, conversion training on larger aircraft like Boeing would cost another Rs 10 lakh or more.
Capt Ashok Arya, an ex-pilot who along with young pilots formed the All India Unemployed Pilots’ Association (UPA) told dna: “”About 7,000 pilots who have commercial flying licenses are currently unemployed. Many young pilots hailing from middle class families have taken huge loans for their training and are unable to repay.”
Many pilots in the association have taken up other jobs, and some have even started their own businesses, Capt Arya says. He laments that the civil aviation ministry wasn’t doing anything about it.
28/06/13 Odeal D’Souza/Daily News & Analysis

1 thought on “Many a dream of flying high has crashed

  1. As being in this industry since past few years have seen many tides and abbes but the Indian aviation industry has seen remarkable growth in last few years.
    The problem of unemployment in our country or by enlarged in this industry is due to misjudge the growth graph by the exports or evaluators as aviation industry is always with full uncertainty and relies on many factors globally. If the global economy has adversity then this industry comes in first few who would have wave at first.
    Even with the seen growth this industry cannot accommodate larger number of employment as compare to other industry in India is due to many air-force pilots’ joins private companies after retirement due to high remunerations by the private operators.

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