Jet's pink slip syndrome has aviation students seeing red
New Delhi: The overnight sacking of 1,900 employees in the aviation industry has made students enrolled with aviation academies in the city quite jittery about their own future.
Ashely Sood (18) finished his schooling from Ryan International this year and now is training to become a flight steward with Avalon Academy. He is also doing his graduation with BCom Pass. His father, of late, has been asking him to concentrate more on his graduation as he might have to do an MBA, the way things are going.
Many aspirants join competitive training programmes that cover aviation, travel and hospitality industry, with guarantee of 100% placement or 50% cash-back policy. However, it’s not money that students want back, but some sort of job security.
Pragati Pande, another aspiring air hostess, said she had a lot of convincing to do before her parents allowed her to come to Delhi from her hometown in Kanpur.
Echoing similar sentiments is 19-year-old Prince Kumar from Bihar. He left his modelling career to become a flying steward, believing that the aviation industry was booming.
However, some also believe that all is not lost and airlines cannot stop flying. Pursuing a course with the Air Hostess Academy (AHA), Harminder Kaur (18) says: “It’s my dream to become an air hostess and nothing will come between me and my dream. This slump is only temporary and cannot go on for long. Air Deccan is coming out with new airliners.
Students also opine that the training they receive makes them eligible for the hospitality and BPO industry as well. “I agree the aviation industry is going through a slump, but we can always get into hospitality, travel and tourism industry too. This a stumbling block, not a dead end. After all, the industry cannot do without us. They need us as much we need them,” says a student.
Meanwhile, training institutes are trying to do damage control, claiming this is only a temporary slump and has happened for the first time.
17/10/08 Deeksha Chopra/Times of India