Air India Express Crash
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Air India Express Crash
CNN is reported that Air India Express with 165 Pax on board departed Dubai for Mangalore over shot the runway and sustained substancial Damage. Some fatalities.
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very stupid
first of my condolences the the families .......its a sad thing to happen ....
how can AI Express official go on tv and say that its the pilots fault ......thats really disturbing ........
how can AI Express official go on tv and say that its the pilots fault ......thats really disturbing ........
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My most sincere condolences to all.
Unlike the piece of dirt spokesperson let's all wait for the actual report based on FACTS to be published. From what I have dug up relating to wx & ops:
Mangalore Crash: Air India Express Boeing 737-800 | George Hatcher’s Air Flight Disaster
R.I.P. but let's not ever forget.
Unlike the piece of dirt spokesperson let's all wait for the actual report based on FACTS to be published. From what I have dug up relating to wx & ops:
Mangalore Crash: Air India Express Boeing 737-800 | George Hatcher’s Air Flight Disaster
R.I.P. but let's not ever forget.
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Feel sorry for the family of Crew and Pax..condolence to all suffering people....may god bless them in this moment...hoping the error of this fatal accident doesnt get put on the head of cockpit crew...
The press conference on the part of AI was a shame and showed what real conditions prevail when day to day work conditions are folowed in this sick organisation..Mr Anup Srivastav happens to be an Ex-Director of Personel Dept of erstwhile IndianAirlines ,senior most Director and was removed from his post due to his mall practisess ...and considering he was giving an shock press conference to all grieving family and members ...he screwed it in big time just like he screwed Indian Airlines....he is the main man behind all Unionized strikes from past 5-6 yrs in old IC...
Dont know how long persons like this would continue to fool people of organization and India....
God bless the PAX and Crew.
The press conference on the part of AI was a shame and showed what real conditions prevail when day to day work conditions are folowed in this sick organisation..Mr Anup Srivastav happens to be an Ex-Director of Personel Dept of erstwhile IndianAirlines ,senior most Director and was removed from his post due to his mall practisess ...and considering he was giving an shock press conference to all grieving family and members ...he screwed it in big time just like he screwed Indian Airlines....he is the main man behind all Unionized strikes from past 5-6 yrs in old IC...
Dont know how long persons like this would continue to fool people of organization and India....
God bless the PAX and Crew.
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Expats
Well this news is just a few days old...there were no Expats on board...ohhh I guess the aircraft was foreign 
..
http://www.ndtv.com/news/india/train...jain-26575.php
..http://www.ndtv.com/news/india/train...jain-26575.php
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Pretty telling of the kind of crew you find in India when "Highly experienced pilots" are those with 1000 hours in the air. They wouldn't let you even touch a caravan with those kind of hours in Africa. And we regularily fly in to far more demanding airfields.
From what I've heard the rush to fill seats is leading to an inevetable increase in accidents and incidents. Just look at Korean Air in the 80's. But I guess the bottom line is all that matters.
From what I've heard the rush to fill seats is leading to an inevetable increase in accidents and incidents. Just look at Korean Air in the 80's. But I guess the bottom line is all that matters.
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FATIGUE and STRESS
The most likely cause of this accident could be the FATIGUE factor.
The bean counters are solely responsible for playing with the lives of passengers by lobbying for increase in FDTL.
The paying passengers need to be seriously enlightened on how unsafe their flights are when the crews are stressed, frustrated (degrading T&Cs etc) and fatigued.
It is extremely alarming to even think of what we might expect in the near future, when we have pilots at the controls, who are drained, memotivated and frustrated because they had to pay for their type ratings, line training and to get a job !!
The bean counters are solely responsible for playing with the lives of passengers by lobbying for increase in FDTL.
The paying passengers need to be seriously enlightened on how unsafe their flights are when the crews are stressed, frustrated (degrading T&Cs etc) and fatigued.
It is extremely alarming to even think of what we might expect in the near future, when we have pilots at the controls, who are drained, memotivated and frustrated because they had to pay for their type ratings, line training and to get a job !!
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!000
I agree with you soap cow Boy.These days it is very easy to fly anything in this part of the world and Middle East with barely minimum hours.Even companies like Gulf Air,Emirates,Etihad,Oman Air,Qatar Airways and not to mention low cost carrier like Arabia,Jazeera,Fly Dubai, etc..Four years ago Gulf Air employed quite a few First officers from Belgium & France flying aircrafts like ATR 42,etc.,and they were automatically qualified to fly A330 & A320 .Now it's quantity not quality.
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Lots of issues effect flying in india, from the poor conditions of the runways, poor atc facilities and a rapidly increasing strain on this system. It is easy to blame pilots as it takes the focus off the real issue a corrupt government who cares only about status and money. Ixe isn't a runway that would even stand out in alaska, central america, africa, south america and many other parts of the world, this pilot was both experienced with the field, india, and the jet. There is more to this story than what the indian media is broadcasting 10 min after the accident. Accidents are never caused by a single issue. Those who judge a pilots ability should look in the mirror, because noone is ammune to mistakes.
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If this wasn't such a tragedy I would be laughing. To an outsider looking in (me) the hypocrisy displayed here is unbelievable. Since the Captain was an expat with thousands of hours we are being cautioned to "tread lightly" "wait for the report" "caused by a corrupt DGCA" "fatigue and stress" "overloaded infrastructure". If the poor guy had been an Indian national, there would have been no hesitation in rushing to judgment and talks about smoking holes would have reappeared with everyone saying "I told you so".
I know there will be a flurry of postings denying this but I am pretty sure there is a group of folks out there who are almost wishing that the Captain had been a national to prove their wild theories about incompetent Indian pilots and how Indian aviation can only be saved by British/ American/European/Australian expert expats.
You know who you are ,but go ahead and deny it. Right now, I am only concerned about the fact that a very experienced pilot was involved in a tragedy of such proportions.
RIP to all those who perished and my best to my friends and colleagues in AI and AI Express.
I know there will be a flurry of postings denying this but I am pretty sure there is a group of folks out there who are almost wishing that the Captain had been a national to prove their wild theories about incompetent Indian pilots and how Indian aviation can only be saved by British/ American/European/Australian expert expats.
You know who you are ,but go ahead and deny it. Right now, I am only concerned about the fact that a very experienced pilot was involved in a tragedy of such proportions.
RIP to all those who perished and my best to my friends and colleagues in AI and AI Express.
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If the poor guy had been an Indian national, there would have been no hesitation in rushing to judgment and talks about smoking holes would have reappeared with everyone saying "I told you so".
I know there will be a flurry of postings denying this but I am pretty sure there is a group of folks out there who are almost wishing that the Captain had been a national to prove their wild theories about incompetent Indian pilots and how Indian aviation can only be saved by British/ American/European/Australian expert expats.
I know there will be a flurry of postings denying this but I am pretty sure there is a group of folks out there who are almost wishing that the Captain had been a national to prove their wild theories about incompetent Indian pilots and how Indian aviation can only be saved by British/ American/European/Australian expert expats.
Which is also the reason why there are hardly any responses by those very people who used to scream and warn about "smoking holes" very recently in certain threads in this forum.
I can not agree more with what our fellow member jimmygill had written sometime back.
SAFETY has VERY LITTLE to do with number of hours in a pilot's logbook.
How and where those hours came from is perhaps equally (or more) important.
Safety is not about 10,000+ hours (expat or Indian).
Safety is about the STANDARDS in place.
Safety is about ADHERING to the regulations and SOPs.
Safety is about not diluting standards or lowering the bar on quality.
A 250 hours CPL holder can very much be trained to be a good, safe, competent pilot of a transport jet if an organization invents enough resources on good training.
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If the poor guy had been an Indian national, there would have been no hesitation in rushing to judgment and talks about smoking holes would have reappeared with everyone saying "I told you so".
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There has been a lot of discussion in the media regarding foreign pilots (also known as “expat pilots”) in the aftermath of the tragic air accident at Mangalore. The Minister of Civil aviation, many bureaucrats, airline officials and even a few journalists have gone to great lengths to explain how experienced foreign pilots hired by Air India and private airlines are essential to the Indian aviation industry. A retired spokesperson of Air India, who has no business to speak on behalf of Air India anymore, has been repeatedly appearing on television to painstakingly explain how important foreign pilots are to the company. Clearly the air disaster at Mangalore with a foreign pilot at the controls has made a lot of powerful people worried .Very worried.
The point however is not whether foreigners should be allowed in Indian carriers or not. Some of them are highly experienced and respected professionals who have undoubtedly made a huge contribution to the Indian airline industry. This article is not about them. It is about a shady scheme of gargantuan proportions, backed by government policy and a well oiled system that feeds on unimaginable corruption, on a scale that would astonish every innocent fare paying air passenger.
Air India is a government run Public Sector Undertaking and thus, it is assumed that rules applicable to other government institutions meant to keep corruption under check would apply to it too. The Ministry of Defence, for example has strict rules debarring the involvement of private middlemen or brokers in facilitating defence contracts. Other ministries have strict guidelines on the recruitment of qualified personnel or consultants where a transparent tendering process has to be adhered to.
In the case of Air India and its subsidiary Air India Express, such rules do not seem to apply at all.
Some years ago, the ministry of civil aviation that ran erstwhile Air India and Indian Airlines, cooked up unrealistic passenger growth projections and placed massive aircraft orders for Air India and Indian Airlines. Private airlines only too eager to float shares to rake in public money and capitalise on the hype jumped in the bandwagon. Overnight, hundreds of vacancies for pilots were created.
Air India began hiring foreign pilots in 2003.Other reputed companies like Singapore Airlines and various Gulf Airlines such as Emirates, recruit foreign nationals too but with great transparency. Foreign pilots hired by them are a part of the regular workforce and are directly hired, without involving middlemen, on local terms. European airlines do not hire non EU nationals.
In Air India’s case, no global tenders were floated for foreign recruitment firms and no advertisements in newspapers announcing vacancies for foreign nationals appeared. Bureaucrats and officials in Air India, hand in glove with their counterparts and politicians in the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Ministry of Labour, Home Ministry, Ministry of External Affairs and other agencies hastily cleared the proposal to hire foreign nationals and the policy of recruiting foreign pilots was established. Politicians of opposition parties were roped in and a cosy arrangement was made.
To bypass opposition from its own employees and to circumvent elaborate transparent recruitment procedures and various laws, a defunct subsidiary, Air India Charters Ltd was revived and used as the vehicle to issue foreigners contracts. Hence the hundreds of foreign pilots in Air India and Air Express are routed through Air India Charters Ltd through recruitment firms and then using a legal loophole, deputed to Air India and Air India Express.
Private firms comprising middlemen and brokers, with the respectable title of “Aviation Consultants” were approached and many of these, such as Rishworth Aviation, Parc Aviation and scores of others appeared out of the wood work. Overnight, new consulting agencies sprang up, some in murky tax havens like the Isle of Man and Channel Islands. All suddenly began to offer “experienced” pilots from all parts of the world. Many of these foreign pilots had and continue to have no clear track record. Some claim to have thousands of hours of flying experience in countries as diverse as Russia and Rwanda. Some of the airlines and countries (such as Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia) that these pilots flew in do not even exist anymore. No background checks are carried out by either Air India or the Indian Government. Strangely the agency of middlemen, or “consultant” supplying the pilots, is entrusted with this task.
Lucrative contracts were tailor-made to lure foreign pilots in droves.
Decades of rules meant to harass Indian pilots such as stringent medical standards were waived off by the government for foreign pilots. Air India’s pilots who are Indian nationals, have to undergo a DGCA medical test known as a Class I medical examination and then are again subjected to an elaborate company medical test known as a Pre Employment Medical Examination (PEME).None of these apply to foreign nationals in India. For example, an Indian pilot may not be allowed fly an Indian passenger aircraft wearing a pacemaker but a foreigner most probably would because the medical standards in his country allow it. There have been cases where Indian pilots who are permanently medically grounded by Indian authorities get foreign citizenship and foreign licences and return to India to fly planes on “expat” terms. Atleast two such “foreign” pilots have served Air India on such a contract.
Infact foreign pilots flying Indian registered aircraft are not even required to have Indian flying licences! All they had to do is produce “proof “of experience and a foreign licence and the DGCA issues a “temporary authorisation”. Such “proof” of experience could be a fake certificate or a fake rubber stamp but nobody carries out a background check.
A foreign pilot is not legally answerable to the Indian DGCA since he does not have an Indian Licence. The DGCA can neither revoke nor suspend his flying licence. Technically, an Indian Co Pilot involved in a serious air accident may lose his flying licence and his job; whereas the pilot, if he is a foreigner can take the next flight home and start life on a clean slate!
To prevent the foreign pilots from coming under the ambit of direct taxes in India, the pilots are “officially” based in foreign countries such as Dubai and not given “local” terms of employment. Every month Air India pays the foreign recruitment agencies the salaries of these pilots along with a commission or “consultancy fees” to foreign bank accounts. This is turn trickles back to the various politicians and officials who patronise the system. Not surprisingly, a foreign pilot who recently approached Air India for a job recently was asked to route his application through a recruitment agency!
As a result , millions of dollars that would have normally gone back to the Indian Income Tax Department by deducting taxes at source (had these pilots been based in India) is diverted to foreign bank accounts in foreign countries.
“Liaison officers” and “advisors”, meant to “facilitate” business interests, are regularly appointed by these foreign recruitment agencies to “liaise” with the various ministries and departments. Two of Air India’s senior most executives from the finance department have retired in the past one year and have joined such firms as “liaison” officers. Another, a retired CMD, continues to show great personal interest in negotiating foreign pilots’ contracts on behalf of recruitment agencies.
Foreign pilots are provided better terms of employment causing demoralisation.They are given more leave, sometimes upto ten days in a month –with the justification that they need to go home to be with their families. Indian pilots flying for Air India Express are made to go on postings for fifteen days at a stretch and given one day off at their home base. Ironically these Indian pilots spend three to four days every month with their families and the foreigners (who could be from neighbouring Nepal or Dubai) spend more than a week to ten days every month on holiday.
Foreigners also get paid a higher salary and are entitled to five star hotel accommodations even when not flying. As a result, hundreds of hotel rooms are booked by Air India at exorbitant rates – a percentage of which presumably flows back to some officials.
This murky system in Air India of the past seven years ,quietly went unnoticed. As long as flights took off on time and passengers reached their destinations nobody really cared. Unions cried themselves hoarse- only to be drowned in the din of the money power of powerful lobbies and an ill informed media ,hesitant to upset a mega industry that generates lucrative advertisement revenue .
The air crash at Mangalore need not have necessarily been caused by an incompetent foreign pilot. This post is not meant to disrespect the majority of foreign pilots in India. But the larger issue of rampant corruption and greed must be addressed immediately. Little wonder that all the officials in the dishonest food chain are now working overtime to cover up the issue.The Minister of Civil Aviation,never one to miss a great media opportunity,rolled his sleeves up on tv and walked towards the wreckage site showing his willingness to lend a helping hand.Heart warming statements of sympathy and numerous compensation promises were made and the media lapped up every bit of it. The minister even offered to resign knowing very well that the Prime Minister could ill afford to lose a partner in a fragile coalition government.
Sadly the one hundred and fifty eight innocent people that have been killed cannot speak for themselves anymore.
Therefore we, the rest of the nation and the aviation world , must stand up in one voice to demand a federal criminal investigation to unravel the mess. We cannot afford to wait for another air disaster to prove the politicians, bureaucrats and officials wrong.
Because when a shady foreign pilot from a strange country with a dubious qualification or medical history actually crashes a plane in India, you and I could be passengers on it.
The point however is not whether foreigners should be allowed in Indian carriers or not. Some of them are highly experienced and respected professionals who have undoubtedly made a huge contribution to the Indian airline industry. This article is not about them. It is about a shady scheme of gargantuan proportions, backed by government policy and a well oiled system that feeds on unimaginable corruption, on a scale that would astonish every innocent fare paying air passenger.
Air India is a government run Public Sector Undertaking and thus, it is assumed that rules applicable to other government institutions meant to keep corruption under check would apply to it too. The Ministry of Defence, for example has strict rules debarring the involvement of private middlemen or brokers in facilitating defence contracts. Other ministries have strict guidelines on the recruitment of qualified personnel or consultants where a transparent tendering process has to be adhered to.
In the case of Air India and its subsidiary Air India Express, such rules do not seem to apply at all.
Some years ago, the ministry of civil aviation that ran erstwhile Air India and Indian Airlines, cooked up unrealistic passenger growth projections and placed massive aircraft orders for Air India and Indian Airlines. Private airlines only too eager to float shares to rake in public money and capitalise on the hype jumped in the bandwagon. Overnight, hundreds of vacancies for pilots were created.
Air India began hiring foreign pilots in 2003.Other reputed companies like Singapore Airlines and various Gulf Airlines such as Emirates, recruit foreign nationals too but with great transparency. Foreign pilots hired by them are a part of the regular workforce and are directly hired, without involving middlemen, on local terms. European airlines do not hire non EU nationals.
In Air India’s case, no global tenders were floated for foreign recruitment firms and no advertisements in newspapers announcing vacancies for foreign nationals appeared. Bureaucrats and officials in Air India, hand in glove with their counterparts and politicians in the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Ministry of Labour, Home Ministry, Ministry of External Affairs and other agencies hastily cleared the proposal to hire foreign nationals and the policy of recruiting foreign pilots was established. Politicians of opposition parties were roped in and a cosy arrangement was made.
To bypass opposition from its own employees and to circumvent elaborate transparent recruitment procedures and various laws, a defunct subsidiary, Air India Charters Ltd was revived and used as the vehicle to issue foreigners contracts. Hence the hundreds of foreign pilots in Air India and Air Express are routed through Air India Charters Ltd through recruitment firms and then using a legal loophole, deputed to Air India and Air India Express.
Private firms comprising middlemen and brokers, with the respectable title of “Aviation Consultants” were approached and many of these, such as Rishworth Aviation, Parc Aviation and scores of others appeared out of the wood work. Overnight, new consulting agencies sprang up, some in murky tax havens like the Isle of Man and Channel Islands. All suddenly began to offer “experienced” pilots from all parts of the world. Many of these foreign pilots had and continue to have no clear track record. Some claim to have thousands of hours of flying experience in countries as diverse as Russia and Rwanda. Some of the airlines and countries (such as Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia) that these pilots flew in do not even exist anymore. No background checks are carried out by either Air India or the Indian Government. Strangely the agency of middlemen, or “consultant” supplying the pilots, is entrusted with this task.
Lucrative contracts were tailor-made to lure foreign pilots in droves.
Decades of rules meant to harass Indian pilots such as stringent medical standards were waived off by the government for foreign pilots. Air India’s pilots who are Indian nationals, have to undergo a DGCA medical test known as a Class I medical examination and then are again subjected to an elaborate company medical test known as a Pre Employment Medical Examination (PEME).None of these apply to foreign nationals in India. For example, an Indian pilot may not be allowed fly an Indian passenger aircraft wearing a pacemaker but a foreigner most probably would because the medical standards in his country allow it. There have been cases where Indian pilots who are permanently medically grounded by Indian authorities get foreign citizenship and foreign licences and return to India to fly planes on “expat” terms. Atleast two such “foreign” pilots have served Air India on such a contract.
Infact foreign pilots flying Indian registered aircraft are not even required to have Indian flying licences! All they had to do is produce “proof “of experience and a foreign licence and the DGCA issues a “temporary authorisation”. Such “proof” of experience could be a fake certificate or a fake rubber stamp but nobody carries out a background check.
A foreign pilot is not legally answerable to the Indian DGCA since he does not have an Indian Licence. The DGCA can neither revoke nor suspend his flying licence. Technically, an Indian Co Pilot involved in a serious air accident may lose his flying licence and his job; whereas the pilot, if he is a foreigner can take the next flight home and start life on a clean slate!
To prevent the foreign pilots from coming under the ambit of direct taxes in India, the pilots are “officially” based in foreign countries such as Dubai and not given “local” terms of employment. Every month Air India pays the foreign recruitment agencies the salaries of these pilots along with a commission or “consultancy fees” to foreign bank accounts. This is turn trickles back to the various politicians and officials who patronise the system. Not surprisingly, a foreign pilot who recently approached Air India for a job recently was asked to route his application through a recruitment agency!
As a result , millions of dollars that would have normally gone back to the Indian Income Tax Department by deducting taxes at source (had these pilots been based in India) is diverted to foreign bank accounts in foreign countries.
“Liaison officers” and “advisors”, meant to “facilitate” business interests, are regularly appointed by these foreign recruitment agencies to “liaise” with the various ministries and departments. Two of Air India’s senior most executives from the finance department have retired in the past one year and have joined such firms as “liaison” officers. Another, a retired CMD, continues to show great personal interest in negotiating foreign pilots’ contracts on behalf of recruitment agencies.
Foreign pilots are provided better terms of employment causing demoralisation.They are given more leave, sometimes upto ten days in a month –with the justification that they need to go home to be with their families. Indian pilots flying for Air India Express are made to go on postings for fifteen days at a stretch and given one day off at their home base. Ironically these Indian pilots spend three to four days every month with their families and the foreigners (who could be from neighbouring Nepal or Dubai) spend more than a week to ten days every month on holiday.
Foreigners also get paid a higher salary and are entitled to five star hotel accommodations even when not flying. As a result, hundreds of hotel rooms are booked by Air India at exorbitant rates – a percentage of which presumably flows back to some officials.
This murky system in Air India of the past seven years ,quietly went unnoticed. As long as flights took off on time and passengers reached their destinations nobody really cared. Unions cried themselves hoarse- only to be drowned in the din of the money power of powerful lobbies and an ill informed media ,hesitant to upset a mega industry that generates lucrative advertisement revenue .
The air crash at Mangalore need not have necessarily been caused by an incompetent foreign pilot. This post is not meant to disrespect the majority of foreign pilots in India. But the larger issue of rampant corruption and greed must be addressed immediately. Little wonder that all the officials in the dishonest food chain are now working overtime to cover up the issue.The Minister of Civil Aviation,never one to miss a great media opportunity,rolled his sleeves up on tv and walked towards the wreckage site showing his willingness to lend a helping hand.Heart warming statements of sympathy and numerous compensation promises were made and the media lapped up every bit of it. The minister even offered to resign knowing very well that the Prime Minister could ill afford to lose a partner in a fragile coalition government.
Sadly the one hundred and fifty eight innocent people that have been killed cannot speak for themselves anymore.
Therefore we, the rest of the nation and the aviation world , must stand up in one voice to demand a federal criminal investigation to unravel the mess. We cannot afford to wait for another air disaster to prove the politicians, bureaucrats and officials wrong.
Because when a shady foreign pilot from a strange country with a dubious qualification or medical history actually crashes a plane in India, you and I could be passengers on it.
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Be Worried.Very Worried
There has been a lot of discussion in the media regarding foreign pilots (also known as “expat pilots”) in the aftermath of the tragic air accident at Mangalore. The Minister of Civil aviation, many bureaucrats, airline officials and even a few journalists have gone to great lengths to explain how experienced foreign pilots hired by Air India and private airlines are essential to the Indian aviation industry. A retired spokesperson of Air India, who has no business to speak on behalf of Air India anymore, has been repeatedly appearing on television to painstakingly explain how important foreign pilots are to the company. Clearly the air disaster at Mangalore with a foreign pilot at the controls has made a lot of powerful people worried .Very worried.
The point however is not whether foreigners should be allowed in Indian carriers or not. Some of them are highly experienced and respected professionals who have undoubtedly made a huge contribution to the Indian airline industry. This article is not about them. It is about a shady scheme of gargantuan proportions, backed by government policy and a well oiled system that feeds on unimaginable corruption, on a scale that would astonish every innocent fare paying air passenger.
Air India is a government run Public Sector Undertaking and thus, it is assumed that rules applicable to other government institutions meant to keep corruption under check would apply to it too. The Ministry of Defence, for example has strict rules debarring the involvement of private middlemen or brokers in facilitating defence contracts. Other ministries have strict guidelines on the recruitment of qualified personnel or consultants where a transparent tendering process has to be adhered to.
In the case of Air India and its subsidiary Air India Express, such rules do not seem to apply at all.
Some years ago, the ministry of civil aviation that ran erstwhile Air India and Indian Airlines, cooked up unrealistic passenger growth projections and placed massive aircraft orders for Air India and Indian Airlines. Private airlines only too eager to float shares to rake in public money and capitalise on the hype jumped in the bandwagon. Overnight, hundreds of vacancies for pilots were created.
Air India began hiring foreign pilots in 2003.Other reputed companies like Singapore Airlines and various Gulf Airlines such as Emirates, recruit foreign nationals too but with great transparency. Foreign pilots hired by them are a part of the regular workforce and are directly hired, without involving middlemen, on local terms. European airlines do not hire non EU nationals.
In Air India’s case, no global tenders were floated for foreign recruitment firms and no advertisements in newspapers announcing vacancies for foreign nationals appeared. Bureaucrats and officials in Air India, hand in glove with their counterparts and politicians in the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Ministry of Labour, Home Ministry, Ministry of External Affairs and other agencies hastily cleared the proposal to hire foreign nationals and the policy of recruiting foreign pilots was established. Politicians of opposition parties were roped in and a cosy arrangement was made.
To bypass opposition from its own employees and to circumvent elaborate transparent recruitment procedures and various laws, a defunct subsidiary, Air India Charters Ltd was revived and used as the vehicle to issue foreigners contracts. Hence the hundreds of foreign pilots in Air India and Air Express are routed through Air India Charters Ltd through recruitment firms and then using a legal loophole, deputed to Air India and Air India Express.
Private firms comprising middlemen and brokers, with the respectable title of “Aviation Consultants” were approached and many of these, such as Rishworth Aviation, Parc Aviation and scores of others appeared out of the wood work. Overnight, new consulting agencies sprang up, some in murky tax havens like the Isle of Man and Channel Islands. All suddenly began to offer “experienced” pilots from all parts of the world. Many of these foreign pilots had and continue to have no clear track record. Some claim to have thousands of hours of flying experience in countries as diverse as Russia and Rwanda. Some of the airlines and countries (such as Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia) that these pilots flew in do not even exist anymore. No background checks are carried out by either Air India or the Indian Government. Strangely the agency of middlemen, or “consultant” supplying the pilots, is entrusted with this task.
Lucrative contracts were tailor-made to lure foreign pilots in droves.
Decades of rules meant to harass Indian pilots such as stringent medical standards were waived off by the government for foreign pilots. Air India’s pilots who are Indian nationals, have to undergo a DGCA medical test known as a Class I medical examination and then are again subjected to an elaborate company medical test known as a Pre Employment Medical Examination (PEME).None of these apply to foreign nationals in India. For example, an Indian pilot may not be allowed fly an Indian passenger aircraft wearing a pacemaker but a foreigner most probably would because the medical standards in his country allow it. There have been cases where Indian pilots who are permanently medically grounded by Indian authorities get foreign citizenship and foreign licences and return to India to fly planes on “expat” terms. Atleast two such “foreign” pilots have served Air India on such a contract.
Infact foreign pilots flying Indian registered aircraft are not even required to have Indian flying licences! All they had to do is produce “proof “of experience and a foreign licence and the DGCA issues a “temporary authorisation”. Such “proof” of experience could be a fake certificate or a fake rubber stamp but nobody carries out a background check.
A foreign pilot is not legally answerable to the Indian DGCA since he does not have an Indian Licence. The DGCA can neither revoke nor suspend his flying licence. Technically, an Indian Co Pilot involved in a serious air accident may lose his flying licence and his job; whereas the pilot, if he is a foreigner can take the next flight home and start life on a clean slate!
To prevent the foreign pilots from coming under the ambit of direct taxes in India, the pilots are “officially” based in foreign countries such as Dubai and not given “local” terms of employment. Every month Air India pays the foreign recruitment agencies the salaries of these pilots along with a commission or “consultancy fees” to foreign bank accounts. This is turn trickles back to the various politicians and officials who patronise the system. Not surprisingly, a foreign pilot who recently approached Air India for a job recently was asked to route his application through a recruitment agency!
As a result , millions of dollars that would have normally gone back to the Indian Income Tax Department by deducting taxes at source (had these pilots been based in India) is diverted to foreign bank accounts in foreign countries.
“Liaison officers” and “advisors”, meant to “facilitate” business interests, are regularly appointed by these foreign recruitment agencies to “liaise” with the various ministries and departments. Two of Air India’s senior most executives from the finance department have retired in the past one year and have joined such firms as “liaison” officers. Another, a retired CMD, continues to show great personal interest in negotiating foreign pilots’ contracts on behalf of recruitment agencies.
Foreign pilots are provided better terms of employment causing demoralisation.They are given more leave, sometimes upto ten days in a month –with the justification that they need to go home to be with their families. Indian pilots flying for Air India Express are made to go on postings for fifteen days at a stretch and given one day off at their home base. Ironically these Indian pilots spend three to four days every month with their families and the foreigners (who could be from neighbouring Nepal or Dubai) spend more than a week to ten days every month on holiday.
Foreigners also get paid a higher salary and are entitled to five star hotel accommodations even when not flying. As a result, hundreds of hotel rooms are booked by Air India at exorbitant rates – a percentage of which presumably flows back to some officials.
This murky system in Air India of the past seven years ,quietly went unnoticed. As long as flights took off on time and passengers reached their destinations nobody really cared. Unions cried themselves hoarse- only to be drowned in the din of the money power of powerful lobbies and an ill informed media ,hesitant to upset a mega industry that generates lucrative advertisement revenue .
The air crash at Mangalore need not have necessarily been caused by an incompetent foreign pilot. This post is not meant to disrespect the majority of foreign pilots in India. But the larger issue of rampant corruption and greed must be addressed immediately. Little wonder that all the officials in the dishonest food chain are now working overtime to cover up the issue.The Minister of Civil Aviation,never one to miss a great media opportunity,rolled his sleeves up on tv and walked towards the wreckage site showing his willingness to lend a helping hand.Heart warming statements of sympathy and numerous compensation promises were made and the media lapped up every bit of it. The minister even offered to resign knowing very well that the Prime Minister could ill afford to lose a partner in a fragile coalition government.
Sadly the one hundred and fifty eight innocent people that have been killed cannot speak for themselves anymore.
Therefore we, the rest of the nation and the aviation world , must stand up in one voice to demand a federal criminal investigation to unravel the mess. We cannot afford to wait for another air disaster to prove the politicians, bureaucrats and officials wrong.
Because when a shady foreign pilot from a strange country with a dubious qualification or medical history actually crashes a plane in India, you and I could be passengers on it.
The point however is not whether foreigners should be allowed in Indian carriers or not. Some of them are highly experienced and respected professionals who have undoubtedly made a huge contribution to the Indian airline industry. This article is not about them. It is about a shady scheme of gargantuan proportions, backed by government policy and a well oiled system that feeds on unimaginable corruption, on a scale that would astonish every innocent fare paying air passenger.
Air India is a government run Public Sector Undertaking and thus, it is assumed that rules applicable to other government institutions meant to keep corruption under check would apply to it too. The Ministry of Defence, for example has strict rules debarring the involvement of private middlemen or brokers in facilitating defence contracts. Other ministries have strict guidelines on the recruitment of qualified personnel or consultants where a transparent tendering process has to be adhered to.
In the case of Air India and its subsidiary Air India Express, such rules do not seem to apply at all.
Some years ago, the ministry of civil aviation that ran erstwhile Air India and Indian Airlines, cooked up unrealistic passenger growth projections and placed massive aircraft orders for Air India and Indian Airlines. Private airlines only too eager to float shares to rake in public money and capitalise on the hype jumped in the bandwagon. Overnight, hundreds of vacancies for pilots were created.
Air India began hiring foreign pilots in 2003.Other reputed companies like Singapore Airlines and various Gulf Airlines such as Emirates, recruit foreign nationals too but with great transparency. Foreign pilots hired by them are a part of the regular workforce and are directly hired, without involving middlemen, on local terms. European airlines do not hire non EU nationals.
In Air India’s case, no global tenders were floated for foreign recruitment firms and no advertisements in newspapers announcing vacancies for foreign nationals appeared. Bureaucrats and officials in Air India, hand in glove with their counterparts and politicians in the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Ministry of Labour, Home Ministry, Ministry of External Affairs and other agencies hastily cleared the proposal to hire foreign nationals and the policy of recruiting foreign pilots was established. Politicians of opposition parties were roped in and a cosy arrangement was made.
To bypass opposition from its own employees and to circumvent elaborate transparent recruitment procedures and various laws, a defunct subsidiary, Air India Charters Ltd was revived and used as the vehicle to issue foreigners contracts. Hence the hundreds of foreign pilots in Air India and Air Express are routed through Air India Charters Ltd through recruitment firms and then using a legal loophole, deputed to Air India and Air India Express.
Private firms comprising middlemen and brokers, with the respectable title of “Aviation Consultants” were approached and many of these, such as Rishworth Aviation, Parc Aviation and scores of others appeared out of the wood work. Overnight, new consulting agencies sprang up, some in murky tax havens like the Isle of Man and Channel Islands. All suddenly began to offer “experienced” pilots from all parts of the world. Many of these foreign pilots had and continue to have no clear track record. Some claim to have thousands of hours of flying experience in countries as diverse as Russia and Rwanda. Some of the airlines and countries (such as Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia) that these pilots flew in do not even exist anymore. No background checks are carried out by either Air India or the Indian Government. Strangely the agency of middlemen, or “consultant” supplying the pilots, is entrusted with this task.
Lucrative contracts were tailor-made to lure foreign pilots in droves.
Decades of rules meant to harass Indian pilots such as stringent medical standards were waived off by the government for foreign pilots. Air India’s pilots who are Indian nationals, have to undergo a DGCA medical test known as a Class I medical examination and then are again subjected to an elaborate company medical test known as a Pre Employment Medical Examination (PEME).None of these apply to foreign nationals in India. For example, an Indian pilot may not be allowed fly an Indian passenger aircraft wearing a pacemaker but a foreigner most probably would because the medical standards in his country allow it. There have been cases where Indian pilots who are permanently medically grounded by Indian authorities get foreign citizenship and foreign licences and return to India to fly planes on “expat” terms. Atleast two such “foreign” pilots have served Air India on such a contract.
Infact foreign pilots flying Indian registered aircraft are not even required to have Indian flying licences! All they had to do is produce “proof “of experience and a foreign licence and the DGCA issues a “temporary authorisation”. Such “proof” of experience could be a fake certificate or a fake rubber stamp but nobody carries out a background check.
A foreign pilot is not legally answerable to the Indian DGCA since he does not have an Indian Licence. The DGCA can neither revoke nor suspend his flying licence. Technically, an Indian Co Pilot involved in a serious air accident may lose his flying licence and his job; whereas the pilot, if he is a foreigner can take the next flight home and start life on a clean slate!
To prevent the foreign pilots from coming under the ambit of direct taxes in India, the pilots are “officially” based in foreign countries such as Dubai and not given “local” terms of employment. Every month Air India pays the foreign recruitment agencies the salaries of these pilots along with a commission or “consultancy fees” to foreign bank accounts. This is turn trickles back to the various politicians and officials who patronise the system. Not surprisingly, a foreign pilot who recently approached Air India for a job recently was asked to route his application through a recruitment agency!
As a result , millions of dollars that would have normally gone back to the Indian Income Tax Department by deducting taxes at source (had these pilots been based in India) is diverted to foreign bank accounts in foreign countries.
“Liaison officers” and “advisors”, meant to “facilitate” business interests, are regularly appointed by these foreign recruitment agencies to “liaise” with the various ministries and departments. Two of Air India’s senior most executives from the finance department have retired in the past one year and have joined such firms as “liaison” officers. Another, a retired CMD, continues to show great personal interest in negotiating foreign pilots’ contracts on behalf of recruitment agencies.
Foreign pilots are provided better terms of employment causing demoralisation.They are given more leave, sometimes upto ten days in a month –with the justification that they need to go home to be with their families. Indian pilots flying for Air India Express are made to go on postings for fifteen days at a stretch and given one day off at their home base. Ironically these Indian pilots spend three to four days every month with their families and the foreigners (who could be from neighbouring Nepal or Dubai) spend more than a week to ten days every month on holiday.
Foreigners also get paid a higher salary and are entitled to five star hotel accommodations even when not flying. As a result, hundreds of hotel rooms are booked by Air India at exorbitant rates – a percentage of which presumably flows back to some officials.
This murky system in Air India of the past seven years ,quietly went unnoticed. As long as flights took off on time and passengers reached their destinations nobody really cared. Unions cried themselves hoarse- only to be drowned in the din of the money power of powerful lobbies and an ill informed media ,hesitant to upset a mega industry that generates lucrative advertisement revenue .
The air crash at Mangalore need not have necessarily been caused by an incompetent foreign pilot. This post is not meant to disrespect the majority of foreign pilots in India. But the larger issue of rampant corruption and greed must be addressed immediately. Little wonder that all the officials in the dishonest food chain are now working overtime to cover up the issue.The Minister of Civil Aviation,never one to miss a great media opportunity,rolled his sleeves up on tv and walked towards the wreckage site showing his willingness to lend a helping hand.Heart warming statements of sympathy and numerous compensation promises were made and the media lapped up every bit of it. The minister even offered to resign knowing very well that the Prime Minister could ill afford to lose a partner in a fragile coalition government.
Sadly the one hundred and fifty eight innocent people that have been killed cannot speak for themselves anymore.
Therefore we, the rest of the nation and the aviation world , must stand up in one voice to demand a federal criminal investigation to unravel the mess. We cannot afford to wait for another air disaster to prove the politicians, bureaucrats and officials wrong.
Because when a shady foreign pilot from a strange country with a dubious qualification or medical history actually crashes a plane in India, you and I could be passengers on it.