Rotor Transition Programmes

It takes a couple of years to make a pilot and close to a decade to make him a Captain capable of taking sound decisions in the air. This is a profession with long gestation times. captains like ‘Sully’ Sullenberger represent a mountain of military-civil experience honed over decades. They cannot be created overnight. Neither do they come cheap.

- KP Sanjeev Kumar

Globally, we are headed for a pilot shortage of mammoth proportions. Boeing’s 2016 Pilot & Technician Outlook predicts that over 600,000 new commercial pilots will be required to fly the world’s fleet over the next 20 years. The current worldwide total of commercial pilots is estimated to be around 130,000. As per reports, in India alone, over 2000 airline pilots will be required by 2018-19 – about 40% more pilots than what they have today.

Airlines have already started casting their nets far & wide. In India, state owned behemoth Air India is hiring around 80 co-pilots for its wide-body B777 and B787 fleet. Most of these are CPL-holders with a type-rating on B737. They are low flight-time greenhorns, hired with the carrot of a future upgrade to the exclusive club of airline captains. Flight schools like the CAE-Oxford Academy have tie-ups with airlines for training raw pilots. Indian Low Cost Carrier Indigo runs a flight cadet programme with Flight Training Adelaide, Australia. They have been fairly successful in hiring freshers and grooming them to become captains and trainers over the last ten years.

But there are large lead times involved. These programmes cannot meet sudden spike in demand for pilots due to policy changes. Also, any domestic carrier folding up leaves in its wake a large number of qualified but unemployed pilots. These surges are difficult to predict and cannot be used for crew planning.

In India, the next game changer would be Modi Government’s recently launched UDAN Scheme. Designed to stimulate regional connectivity with flights covering distances up to 800 km, this will see a spike in short-haul operations of turboprops like the ATR 72 or Q400. Traditionally, pilots have preferred jets over turboprops as it kept their options open for transition to wide bodied aircraft. But we may soon see a reverse exodus, incentivised by airlines looking to encash on the UDAN boom.