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India pilot shortage

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Old 27th May 2006, 10:10
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Grrr India pilot shortage

Interesting article here:

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp...+%28F%29&sid=1
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Old 27th May 2006, 11:03
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Yeah interesting indeed...seems to be pointing the finger at "johnny foreigner" for the lack of infrastructure..beauracratic ineptitude..and general lack of professionalism
Having operated to India and its surrounds a few times, I think it will take a hell of a lot more than just locally trained pilots to sort some of these things out.


In the first week of February this year, the German commander of an Air Deccan flight mistook a flyover next to the Hussain Sagar lake in Hyderabad for the runway. An alert air traffic controller saved the day.
On February 18, just before take-off from Delhi, a Jet Airways flight piloted by a Nigerian entered a taxiway meant for planes that exit the runway after landing
On March 11, the nose-wheel of an ATR plane of Air Deccan carrying 40 passengers broke after a rough landing at Bangalore. The pilot was a Zambian.
In September 2005, the Bolivian pilot of a Calcutta-Mumbai Air Sahara flight with 119 passengers misjudged the length of the runway, overshot it
On October 10, 2005, a Romanian pilot of Air India Express on the Dubai-Kochi sector landed, ignoring an air traffic controller's warning
Sounds a heck of a lot like poor airmanship and poor judgement..rather than being foreign as the cause for these. I wonder what the standard of training is like in India?
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Old 27th May 2006, 12:56
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Feel a bit sorry for the ATR fella in Bangalore. The runway and taxiway are as rough as guts. Was amazed at how much grunt we required just to taxi up hill. One end of the runway is about 30ft higher than the other and makes the Manchester hump look like a mole hill. An amazing country to fly over thou. Must be heaps of jobs happening for the boys with aircraft orders.
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Old 27th May 2006, 13:38
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Question

..and where can you read that an Indian carrier with Indian crew made abviously an overrun at HYD ?
..and where can you read that a Indian crew of an Indian carrier continued the flight instead of doing an immediate return - as required by aircraft manufacturer manual ?
..and where can you read that a Indian carrier with an Indian crew hit the approach lights ?#
..and where can you read that a international well-known certificate was denied to an Indian airline, obviously due to lack of maintenace procedures ?
..and wherelse can you reading something if an incident occurs with an 100% Indian crew ?


cheap propaganda against foreigners/expats - that's it! - my opinion

Always (at least: or TRY) to blame the foreigner - seems to be part of the system

as I said before: INCREDIBEL INDIA
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Old 27th May 2006, 13:54
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Whats your story Mr. Airbus_a321; why do have this personal issue with India & Indian aviation ? SOUR GRAPES
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Old 27th May 2006, 18:44
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Left Wing

Is it only the non Indian pilots that are having incidents in India? or anywhere else in the world

PS I don't have a problem with either India or Aircrew from that or any other region.
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Old 27th May 2006, 18:59
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Originally Posted by haughtney1
Yeah interesting indeed...seems to be pointing the finger at "johnny foreigner" for the lack of infrastructure..beauracratic ineptitude..and general lack of professionalism ...
All things considered, it's easy to point the finger at a lot of things wrong, both foreign & domestic. This journo (outlookindia.com) has the axe grinding on one side only.

Considering their inability to fix all the problems at the international gateway (Mumbai-Santa Cruz), Indians should not be ashamed to hire all the foreign help they can to get the job done.
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Old 27th May 2006, 19:40
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Angel

The newspaper shows the beginning of an arrogant attitude mainly to foreigners as said here. I also see it from a different angle. This is the reflection of a rapid growth in the so called "hot economies" like India and China among few others, where the local CivAirs and local airlines (training & safety) will not follow the appropriate steps to ensure safety (FIRST) . Also, the commercial pressure from the "mini-managers" will most likely override their own safety departments and sometimes fleet managers, and where the buck will have to stop with the operating crews and their flight dispatchers if these aren't in anyway afraid of losing their jobs for "undesirable" decisions... Interesting times ahead... More multicultural impartial and responsible auditors/inspectors NOW please because flying nowadays is so multicultural... i.e. German, Nigerian, Zambian, Bolivian, Romanian, etc..
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Old 27th May 2006, 22:49
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Last time I checked, most airliners I've flown said "2 pilots" under the minimum crew limitations. They conveniently fail to mention that the other pilot in the cockpit of the accident airplanes were probably Indian.

Authorities in India have said that with the rapid expansion they are aiming to put at least one local in every cockpit. That is an unrealistic goal. I know that Airbuses (and most new airplanes these days) are designed to remove the pilot from the equation, but it doesn't mean that they have done it. The cockpit of an airliner is not the place to learn the basics of aviation. That is why we learn in a small slow airplane and simulators. You don't want to have 180 souls on board when you learn that getting slow on an un-coordinated turn to final can lead to a smoking hole.

India (like China) just doesn't have an aviation background that they can call on to staff their growing airlines. Other parts of the world have "pools" of pilots which the airlines have to pick from. There is an infrastructure that creates pilots whether the airlines need them or not (military, GA, corporate) That infrastructure in these booming countries is non-existent, or incapable to meet the demand. That happens when a country has tremendous growth and "leap-frogs" in order to catch up. It doesn't mean that they wont catch up, but they have to be smart about it. And it isn't going to happen overnight.

Instead of clossing the door to experienced expats by placing restrictions and limitations, they should be attracting talent and learning as much as possible from them. (ex: HKG, Japan, Singapore, etc...) It does them no good to trash expats flying in their country. You want talent to come and help out? Then make it worth it for them to move their families to a whole different region and culture.

Otherwise, with flying that good, you can do it yourself.
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Old 28th May 2006, 00:06
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Sqwak7700,

Amen, Brother...Amen !!!
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Old 28th May 2006, 06:22
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OK, dont want to justify what Outlook reporter has written about foreign pilots but the rest of the article re the Indian pilot shortage is true.I think the quality of the foreign pilots we're attracting has a lot to be desired.This is mainly due to
1.Pay- Airbus/Boeing pilots get paid more in europe/middle east /US etc...U pay peanuts,U get monkeys.....
2.Moving over to India- Many "first" world pilots would find it hard to move to a chaotic city like mumbai for example....

Long term remedy would be to start abinitio programs NOW to meet the growing demand by the various airlines, the Air force idea's a good one too but they've got the same shortage situation now as most private airlines have got their hands on any ex-airforce flyer they can find.....

In the meantime , being Indian and a captain with one of the private airlines, I have to say it's never been this good, I'm grappling with the dilemma of going 4 A320 command with a loco or staying on the 737 with a stable growing airline..... let the good times roll.....
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Old 29th May 2006, 09:52
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Other than Jet airways airlines in India cannot pull in quality expat pilots...lower pay than ME airlines and not a permanent job all are contract jobs besides the poor training by the airlines make it a chain reaction. Gets hyped by the local media...
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Old 29th May 2006, 15:05
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I do not normally comment on this forum but think that two points need to be made.

1. If the newspaper article had appeared in many other counties the writer would be in danger of breaching a law or two for unscientifically pointing the finger at all non India pilots. The allegation that one group of pilots is unsafe should at least be backed up by comparing number of India pilots involved in incidents verses number of expats and adjusted proportionally.

2. Even the mathmatically challenged can work out that if India needs 2000 pilots or 4000+ in the next 4 years and the flying schools are producing a maximum (allowing for the ramping up of two schools to output 100 pilots each) of 200 pilots per year then India is going to be relying on expats for a long time. Additionally your 200 pilots per annum need 5 to 10 years minimum to become captains.

India is a great country with very nice people and some talented avaitors. It makes me sad to think that a culture of creating expat scapegoats may be developing.
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Old 30th May 2006, 08:05
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Propaganda to find a blame. I would go to India today but the Administration takes ages to issue permitts, validations and Visa. But sooner or later I will be there.

Fly safe land happy

NG
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Old 30th May 2006, 09:10
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You get what you pay for.

Who would want to live in dirty India, not a garden paradise, and fly left seat in any airplane for less than USD $12,000/month...? Not me.
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Old 30th May 2006, 14:19
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hey glueball...
Come on down to our "dirty" part of the world for the big moolah , the airline I work for recently revised their expat salaries...here goes...all USD.

Wide body narrow regional/turboprop


TRE 11,400 10,200 9,300


TRI 10,900 9,700 8,850


Captains 10,400 8,700 8,100

I believe they only hire through agencies, so please no pms ....
masalama...
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Old 30th May 2006, 16:50
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Dirty India

What a load of rubbish....the place is far less clean than that! Incredible and indescribable filth, mirrored by the chaotic state of the airports. Beggars, mosquitoes, snakes, toilets from hell, squalor, and on. And that's just the passenger terminals.

And yet....India has a charm and an edge which makes it a must-visit place. Polite and helpful people live there, trying to get to grips with an amazingly convoluted bureaucracy. Working there as FD is definitely a challenge, but don't write it off despite all the above-mentioned. And it is far safer for white-skinned Europeans and Americans than most parts of the Middle East. (Main danger is a dodgy curry or samosa!)
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Old 30th May 2006, 19:24
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Simply, India isn't ready for the mega-growth ahead of them. Something will have to give in.
Among many, I'm inclined to believe safety is going to be one of them.
The government has not moved fast (legislation, investment in human/material resources to support this forecast growth, etc.) as the private sector wants to, red tape is abundant, the CivAir is miles away from an updated rule-making and supervising establishement, airports are still (in any signs of development), airlines want to grow fast but don't have the full (needed) infrastructure to carry out such a transformation in recruiting, selecting, training, checking, etc..
Obviously, Ts & Cs (housing, living conditions) are something to think about seriously and carefully if one thinks to move to India, but I would leave them alone for now. On a positive note, India has got many more beautiful places than the slums in and around BOM, DEL, CCU, etc., and the massive majority of the population is very friendly.
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Old 30th May 2006, 21:07
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Question

Whats the money like for someone who's 747 classic,bae146 and 737-800 rated??Captain I need the money Greaser!!!
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Old 31st May 2006, 04:30
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Airconditioned Nightmare

Yes indeed, one can stay at the plush Mumbai Hyatt or Leela and be cocooned, isolated and totally disconnected from India.

But often comes the time when you have to make your way to the filthy airport terminal; and just the short drive from the 13 acre Leela garden compound takes you through the stench and filth of squatters' alley with people living in wooden shacks, tents and cardboard boxes and deficating in drainage ditches beside the road. All this will add to the stress of expat quality of life.

I have travelled a great deal and I can tell you that this sanitation horror is not just at Mumbai, but everywhere.
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