{"id":294,"date":"2007-09-19T18:38:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-19T18:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/indianaviationnews.net\/avicareers\/?p=294"},"modified":"2007-09-19T18:38:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-19T18:38:00","slug":"look-who%e2%80%99s-flying-your-plane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/2007\/09\/look-who%e2%80%99s-flying-your-plane.html","title":{"rendered":"Look who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s flying your plane"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;\" ><span style=\"color: rgb(153, 0, 0);\">Mumbai:<\/span> A<\/span> huge shortage of pilots for flying commercial planes may have caused private airlines and the government to lower standards for recruitment, veteran pilots and industry watchers feared, a trend that is potentially dangerous.<br \/>Flying institutes without enough equipment and instructors, co-pilots who are younger than 20 years and the large number of foreign pilots, many of whom are unfamiliar with the local topography and climate, are symptoms of this skills shortage, they said.<br \/>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Pilot training is the backbone of the industry,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Captain Yash Raj Tongia, a pilot who runs and teaches at an eponymous flying school in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Indian aviation sector needs at least 4,000 more pilots over the next five years, but most flying schools in are yet to upgrade their quality.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d More than half his students are dropouts from other institutes, fed up of waiting for instructors to come on board.<br \/>Almost half the 320 pilots who got licences last year were trained abroad. Domestic airlines together have 350 aircraft, flown by 4,500 pilots \u00e2\u20ac\u201d including 1,100 foreigners.<br \/>Take the training institutes. Out of the 41 approved flying schools in India, 16 have shut down or are on the verge of closure. The remaining ones have only 32 instructors in all.<br \/>The country\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rules also allow a person to become a co-pilot, who stands in for the pilot, after just six months of obtaining his or her commercial pilots\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 licence. This means that many private airlines have co-pilots who are younger than 20 years of age. In the U.S. one becomes a co-pilot in a commercial airline only seven years after getting a licence.<br \/>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We recently increased our age limit for co-pilots to 21 years,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Captain J S Dhillon, head of operations SpiceJet, and declined to comment about other airlines, whose chief executives were not available for comment.<br \/>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Indian authorities don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t allow two 60-year-olds inside the cockpit, but they are fine with one 19-year-old and one 60-year-old!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d exclaimed a veteran pilot, who did not want to be identified.<br \/>Kanu Gohain, the director general of civil aviation, defended the rules. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Once the candidate has fulfilled all the criteria including fight tests, there is no harm if he or she is 19 years old,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We issue licences after a well-laid-down procedure, and in fact, the younger lot are more sharp and receptive.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/><span style=\"color: rgb(153, 0, 0);\">19\/09\/07 Lalatendu Mishra\/Hindustan Times<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mumbai: A huge shortage of pilots for flying commercial planes may have caused private airlines and the government to lower<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indianaviationnews.net\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}