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Friday, May 20, 2005

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

The new job market — in the sky

V. Jayanth

The new private airlines setting up shop need pilots and cabin crew in a hurry.

MORE INTERNATIONAL airlines are connecting various Indian cities and more private domestic airlines are taking shape in the country, thanks to the Government's open skies policy. The chief executives of the new airlines are busy scouting not just for leased aircraft but also the crew to operate them. None of them has thought of setting up permanent training facilities. That is a time-consuming affair, involving substantial investment. The easier option is to poach — lure staff from other airlines with a more attractive package.

Perhaps, the easiest prey will be the two national carriers — Air India and Indian Airlines. They have both Airbus and Boeing aircraft in their fleet. However, the two airlines have also announced ambitious expansion plans, with the AI Board opting for 50 Boeing aircraft of various models and IA plumping for 43 Airbus planes. They will themselves need dozens of more pilots, including commanders, and an army of cabin crew. If the private airlines and a couple of foreign carriers who may be going in for at least Indian cabin crew in part want trained staff in such numbers, where do they go?

Kingfisher, the Bangalore-based Vijay Mallya's new airline, has entered into a no-poaching agreement with another Bangalore-based no-frills airline, Air Deccan. Mr. Mallya recently told this newspaper that he would not poach for crew in the two national carriers. Aside from Jet Airways and Air Sahara, which plan to expand domestic services and fly to foreign destinations, a clutch of new airlines is likely to come up over the next 12 months. Kingfisher has also made it known that it will entrust its ground operations support to IA. The new airlines will also need to build their own bases to ground their aircraft and equip themselves for routine maintenance. State Governments are expected woo some of these airlines to set up their bases, offering them special incentives. For instance, Andhra Pradesh attracted Air Sahara to make Hyderabad its "hub."

The expansion of the Civil Aviation sector, notably in the number of airlines and aircraft, opens up new vistas in employment generation. It is surprising that a consortium approach has not been thought of to set up training facilities. It is equally surprising too that AI and IA, which have the basic training facilities — for pilots and cabin crew — have not evolved a marketing plan to open up their doors to competition. In fact, IA sources say there was a specific proposal to offer training facilities to the new private airlines. But this has not moved forward. It could be a useful revenue-earning exercise as well.

For the moment though, private airlines are looking at not just the national carriers. They are also poaching in neighbouring skies. A lot of old IA and AI pilots flew away to countries such as Sri Lanka and Singapore for instance, and have reportedly expressed their willingness to come back if the offer is attractive enough.

There are clearly laid down rules and regulations for the flying hours that a pilots should undertake as also the basic requisite to become "commanders."

Senior pilots with the national carriers are raising some fundamental issues: who is looking at the norms for recruitment of pilots?

They wonder if the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation is equipped to deal with such a battery of airlines, aircraft and pilots. Safety becomes a crucial question in this whole exercise and the travelling public will certainly want to know if the safety standards will be transparent and implemented uniformly.

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