Washington Times Article on Pilot Shortage
Wanted: Pilots for young airlines
By Daniel Pepper
December 13, 2007
NEW DELHI — India"s rapidly growing airline industry — already plagued by decaying infrastructure, frequent delays and financial losses — is now facing a pilot shortage.
The domestic airline industry"s 47 percent growth rate has led the country"s dozen-odd carriers, many of which are less than five years old, to scour the globe for qualified captains or commanders.
"Ever since the hiring boom here, students are running wherever they can to go to get qualified," said John Ekl, the American chief pilot of two-year-old New Delhi-based SpiceJet, which is patterned after Southwest Airlines.
SpiceJet has 15 jets and 50 on order. With a lack of qualified Indian pilots available, Mr. Ekl has turned to recruiting American pilots. He has hired 42 foreign pilots already, 30 of them American, and expects to hire 30 more by the end of the year.
Going abroad to find pilots is relatively new; when the scramble for pilots began two years ago, airlines would just poach each others" staffs. The practice continued until the beginning of this year, when the major Indian carriers agreed to a no-poaching pact.
But the hiring spree is not expected to slow any time soon. Indian carriers have 425 Boeing and Airbus aircraft on order, and by 2020, India will need 10,000 more pilots, said Kapil Kaul, a consultant in New Delhi with the Center for Asia Pacific Aviation. Currently, there are 3,000 pilots in India — about 600 of whom are foreigners — and almost all are captains with thousands of hours of flying experience.
They can take home between $120,000 and $160,000 a year, with overtime. That is five times what Indian captains could make 10 years ago, when Indian pilots were among the worst-paid in the world and many left for jobs in Southeast Asia. Today, their salaries are huge by the standards of India, where 800 million people still live on less than $2 day.
The pilot shortage is not unique to India; pilots are in high demand in Japan, the United States and the Middle East. In India, though, the problem is part of a larger skilled-worker shortage in the country"s flourishing economy.
However, a pilot shortage has far more serious ramifications than other types of shortages. A frustrated foreign pilot flying with IndiGo, a new Indian discount carrier, said India "is one step ahead of Africa — and Africa is a dangerous place."
"In a lot of respects, I think India is a Third World country," he said.
Kanu Gohain, head of Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the government regulatory agency, blames the airlines for the shortage, saying they have "not made a serious effort to induct and train [pilots]."
At Mr. Gohain's discretion, foreign pilots are allowed to fly in India on a temporary basis for one year — a stay that is usually extended to three years.
"I take the decision, and they have to justify it to me" based on the airlines' efforts to train Indian pilots, Mr. Gohain said.
"The requirement is simple — that the airlines train Indian pilots," he said.
Mr. Gohain expects the influx of foreign pilots to last "maximum another two years." Airline executives and analysts, though, are skeptical and hope the agency will relax its rules even further.
"Finding pilots is the biggest challenge for any airline in India," said Kingfisher Airlines' head of human resources, Rubi Arya, and one that is eating into the airlines" bottom lines. Ms. Arya is lobbying the DGCA to increase the amount of time that foreign pilots can stay in India from three to six years and reduce the time it takes to convert a foreign license to an Indian pilot's license for Indian nationals, which can now take more than six months.
To better prepare themselves for a continued dearth of pilots, airlines are sending promising cadets for training in the United States.
Still, most experts say four or five years will pass before the large numbers of foreign pilots can be pared down and Indian first officers will be able to take over most captain"s seats.