Opinion - News Analysis   

Too many planes, too few pilots

T.S. Shankar

The shortage of qualified pilots is cause for concern.

THE BOOM in the civil aviation sector has put the focus on air safety. Does the apex regulatory body, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), have the wherewithal to ensure the rules are followed?

There is an acute shortage of qualified pilots. In fact, the industry projection is that 4,000 more commanders will be needed to meet the expansion plans till 2010. "There is no way we can produce that number of commanders. There are not enough qualified pilots even in the global market," says a Boeing 737 check pilot based in Chennai.

With the DGCA permitting the logging of 1,000 flying hours a year, a minimum of five sets of cockpit crew per aircraft are required for domestic jet operations. On international sectors, a minimum of eight sets of crew per aircraft are needed, according to an aviation source.

The DGCA has stipulated that to qualify for direct command on wide-bodied aircraft, a pilot should have logged at least 7,000 flying hours, 4,000 of them as commander on smaller aircraft with an all-up weight of 55,000 kg.

The pilot shortage has resulted in some easing of norms on duty hours, known in aviation parlance as "Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL)." Further, airlines do not have enough qualified engineers either, raising fears about the quality of aircraft maintenance procedures.

Besides, are the safety audits by the DGCA being carried out on schedule since the regulatory body is also facing shortage of trained personnel to handle so many airlines? The Air Passengers Association of India (APAI) has already called for setting up an independent civil aviation regulatory authority.

Now the DGCA has allowed foreign nationals to fly as commanders to meet the shortage of pilots. Aviation experts say the earlier policy of not allowing foreign co-pilots was to improve the employment prospects of many youngsters in India. It takes about four years before a co-pilot makes captain. For a trainee to become a co-pilot in India, it takes about one year to complete the mandatory 200 hours of flying. That is the reason captains from abroad were allowed in.

The DGCA is also allowing private airlines to employ non-airline jet rated pilots with turbo-prop and fighter jet flying experience from the services, directly as captains on new generation aircraft. They are unfamiliar with the Electronic Flight Instrument Systems these aircraft have. It takes a minimum of 300 hours to become comfortable with the EFIS.

Air Force pilots also do not have enough experience of flying in monsoon conditions, says a senior Boeing instructor and a former core group member of the DGCA Task Force on the Approach and Landing Accident Reduction (ALAR) Procedure.

The former Director-General, Civil Aviation, H.S. Khola, admitted that the pace at which the civil aviation sector was expanding was outstripping availability of trained manpower of the DGCA. The Government should implement the M.K. Kaw Committee report on reorganising the DGCA, he said. Mr. Kaw is former Civil Aviation Secretary.

The report had favoured setting up a central air university, State air universities, a DGCA training academy, and better supervision over flying clubs. It had suggested that the DGCA be given a sufficient budget and administrative and financial autonomy.

Against this backdrop, the APAI has questioned the authenticity of the safety audits conducted by the DGCA. "We have demanded creation of a Civil Aviation Regulatory Authority (CARA) on the lines of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to tackle issues concerning passenger safety," said APAI president D. Sudhakara Reddy.

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