Incredible India for expats...or better not?
Please read this carefully and decide for yourself. Own experience and confirmations from several colleagues and friends have been used to summarize as follows.
India is an amazing place, you have two choices, love it or hate it; if you hate it, do yourself, your family and your health a favor, leave, don't go again, forget about it.
If you love it, you will find crowded towns, dirty environment, interesting places, nice and friendly people, spicy (but excellent) food, good quality hotels, all sort of contradiction at every corner.
And you will find a growing aviation industry. No, not growing, exploding is the real term. The first wave of explosions started in 1993/94 and just a few years back the second wave rolled in.
All followed the world economies and it went smoother also in India.
As other industry sectors have discovered over many years the same rushed and useless, even stupid and ridiculous changes in laws and so called orders entered the aviation industry; this despite maintaining the poor and dangerously lazy approach towards existing, well below world standard safety related procedures.
Corruption at all levels, starting with the security check at the airport, all the way up to his highness the DGCA (well, the one I am talking about is gone meanwhile...he must still have the golden vase in which the flowers for his wife were presented) has opened doors for many players in the field.
Recent changes force Indian airlines to find more expats working for them, they are needed not only to replace medically "unfit" colleagues, also the still ongoing growth demands more drivers. And the Indian pilot market is presently also under investigation, more hidden details will be discovered over time.
The medical issue is not just a simple one. India refuses to convert your licence, and it will have no value anywhere else anyway, you will only be issued a validation, of course based on your present licence. One step to have said validation issued is the medical exam. I will not go through these details here again, there are other explicit description on here available already; tiredness and sleepiness of one pilot has been claimed to be the major contributing factor in the Mangalore crash, a horrifying one, and what was the reaction from the authorities? Instead of looking into the real reason for the claimed fatigued pilot, the DGCA and the respective ministry orders medical
exams...just one example of how "solutions" are created.
The next major issue is dealing with the airlines themselves.
Many agencies offer direct contracts with Indian airlines; they may sound lucrative and very interesting, when going down this route, one can find out quickly, however, there are many hidden agendas.
Let's have a look at the contracts, in this case an "award" winning low-cost operator with its headquarter in the capital.
You apply to any of the agencies and send your details as per request. If the agency still accepts to work with this particular airline (it happened several times that agencies simply had enough of the one or other airline and halted further proceedings) your details are checked and the reply to you will be the essential agency application documents and the Indian validation application, the FATA forms.
After two days of comparing, cross-checking, counting, summarizing and scanning all needed items, you are happy and send all to the agency to support your application.
The only document you have in your hands is the proposal of what the airline "may" offer. Your request to have a draft copy of the final contract is denied as this will only be available once the process in India is completed. And this may take up 3 months or even more....as it happened in 2010. Seven months of sending papers forward and backwards, submitting new forms as the DGCA changed the FATA forms, supplying even more documents, re-submitting documents which were meanwhile expired...Until you eventually have enough of this nonsense and continue to pursue other projects.
A wake-up call may happen after a month or so and the Chief Pilot of said airline will conduct a quick interview on the phone, so prepare yourself and live with your questions glued to your body as it will happen out of the blue. The agency will confirm that you are selected and that all will be fine....until the airline decides to employ some retired ex-airforce wing commanders and colonels, who need to show in the office that they know what they are doing and confirm on a daily basis their needed presence (play being busy while not doing anything...). You will discover this in receiving another out of the blue phone call of a more drunken sounding representative of the airline, barely even able to introduce himself properly; some mumbling about another needed interview and scrutinizing of documents and more stuttering will allow the Indian phone company to proof with their bill the importance of this nonsense call.
Your agency may be so friendly to confirm to you that you are not the only one who has been called, it should not have happened and the airline is already looking into the problem to solve and stop this issue. Allright, all moves then....really? Yes, it does! Beside this "strange" phone call, you will suddenly receive some more calls, this time the caller-ID is somehow strangely shortened, only few digits are shown, but clearly from India. And the caller? Well, I received personally 3 calls, each time from a different person, each time very insulting and very threatening; in strong vocabulary I was given the clear message to not even consider to pursue any further my application with this airline and any other Indian airline as otherwise my health may be in jeopardy upon arrival in India....now, should I be frightened? At least I was left with the question of how these guys got hold of the knowledge about my application and my phone number....You still hope to continue?
Now, if you are lucky to get your mailbox suddenly showing "We proudly present ...." your body will most probably experience the best vertigo you have ever heard of.
In short, the company will be allowed to do anything with you, while you have no rights and not even a chance to object. You may remember that India is supposed to be a democracy, that obviously does not apply to the environment in an airline; and the best thing still has to be discovered, the agencies proposal about the contract was "upgraded" to limit your rights and your perks even more...
A few details:
- The contract start date is not when you commence your duty, it is when you report for duty, whenever that may be after clearances etc.
- Also you expect a tax-free salary, acc. to the contract tax will be deducted as well as statutory payments, no explanation about these ones, you will contribute a PF according company rules..what?
- Not one word in the contract about who is responsible for the costs of obtaining and maintaining Indian validation etc. however, it says that you have to pay FRRO, whatever that is.
- You will be required to get a working permit, a residence permit etc...a PAN numer (what is that...) and the costs???? Of course, you have off-days, you will take your private time for all this...also for the medical, and that takes easily 3 days and most probably not even at your base...
- There are references in the contract to other clauses, which in turn are not even mentioned in the contract...
- There is a reference to holidays to be explained in appendix "A", which does not even show anywhere the word "holiday"...
- Also you have to provide any personal changes to the company, this contract makes you responsible that the company updates your records...how will that work?
- The airline is allowed to lower your salary, put you on unpaid leave, kick you out as they like. You can resign, yes, with a ban of minimum 6 months to join any other airline in India (if you still want to stay in the country) and a no objection certificate may be expected whenever the company wants to issue one...
- You will receive manuals and other items, if you tear one page out, you will have to buy a new one...
- You are supposed to sign the contract "as being present in India" and you confirm that you have taken legal advise about the contract, how will you do this in your home-country...
- Medical provided, however, not for international flights and layovers
- Home base may be changed to be in any country...really? I doubt that I like Bahrain these days...
- All clauses in the contract can be changed by the company at any given time....and you cannot even refuse any of them...it is written like this.
15 months between the initial contact and having the first chance to read the contract, and I did not mention all details; my list is 37 items long, too long to expect any cooperation possible.
My health will not be threatened, further interviews will not be required, my decision is clear, sad about the wasted time...a draft contract right at the beginning will have saved a lot of headache for many people...now, I need vacation after this all...