Where is He?

CEO: Where is he?

HR Manager: Sir, he just quit the job.

CEO: And what made him leave?

HR Manager: He was offered a 30 per cent raise by another operator.

CEO: Is he not the same one who we took last year by giving a 30 per cent raise ourselves?

HR Manager: Yes.

CEO: How much time before we hire the next one?

HR Manager: All our short-listed candidates have found a job.

CEO: How come?

HR Manager: There is a huge demand and it never seems to end.

CEO: Get the rejected candidates list.

HR Manager: There are not many from that list who are available. We have one, Captain Dull. He fared poorly in the induction.

CEO: Who made him a PIC? Anyways hire him. How much time before he can start flying as PIC?

HR Manager: One year.

CEO: Why so much?

HR Manager: He needs to go for his simulator training followed by 100-hour of co-pilot/supervised flying.

CEO: What options do we have?

HR Manager: We could hire a foreign pilot.

CEO: What will it cost?

HR Manager: Six months for security clearance, FATA and regulations paper. Since he is a foreigner, they would not insist on his 100-hour experience.

CEO: Why so?

HR Manager: Because no one in the world follows 100-hour rule.

CEO: Will it cost us more to hire from abroad?

HR Manager: Yes, it will.

CEO: Will it be safe to hire a foreign pilot?

HR Manager: Relatively unsafe because it’s been experienced that foreign pilots have to adapt to the indian air traffic controller’s style of speaking and are often found intimidated by various government offices. Also, the best foreign pilots are employed in their own countries. The ones who would join us would be the Captain Dulls of their countries.

CEO: Ok, six months grounding is better than a year. Hire Captain Dull from that country.

This is the future of pilot availability in India. The aviation boom may be giving us reasons to rejoice, but we face a huge demand of pilots which will be difficult to fill. We may open a National Aviation University or flying schools but they would be only able to churn out co-pilots. Where would the Pilot in Commands (PICs) come from? How much would we be paying the PICs? It would soon be “highest salaries in the world”. India, which stands in high three digit rankings in manpower expenses in the world, faces a reverse trend with respect to aviation, and it would soon top the chart for PIC salaries in the world. Sometimes we wonder if it’s a planned effort from the pilot community in India to make most stringent rules so as to create an artificial deficiency, making the PIC’s demand and salaries, more and more.

The bureaucracy, the red tapism, the babugiri, the corruption, the lack of transparency, the instability in senior ranks. These needs to be addressed so as to give a perfect environment to bring about the change!

It is strange that technology which is today urging mankind to send passenger UAVs into the skies in some countries, has not been able to give any confidence to Indians who still keep following the archaic rules which existed before the simulators were invented. Our ab initio training syllabus is the maximum in the world. Our actual flying training syllabus is the maximum in the world. The whole world permits a pilot in command, to start flying immediately after conversion on simulators. We make him fly for 100 hours as co-pilot before clearing him as PIC. Our number of checks are the maximum in the world. We have the most overly trained pilots in the world.

Unless we don’t change with the world, we will continue to lag behind. Good part is that the “change is inevitable”. I don’t think that nation’s leadership can do better than appointing stellar professionals of the likes of Mr Jayant Sinha, Mr R.N. Choubey, Ms Usha Padhee, Mr B.S. Bhullar and few senior ranking Additional Secretaries and JDGs at the helm of affairs. The inertia at lower ranks will burst and change therefore is round the corner. One of the most promising statements made recently by the Secretary of Civil Aviation, “I have given instructions that wherever we find EASA and FAA regulations permitting something, DGCA will not unnecessarily have different standards”.

What is still missing? The bureaucracy, the red tapism, the babugiri, the corruption, the lack of transparency, the instability in senior ranks. These need to be addressed so as to give a perfect environment to bring about the change!