Director General of DGCA Arun Kumar during an interview with The Hindu in New Delhi.
| Photo Credit: R.V. Moorthy
For every three pilots in the country who finish flying training, there is one who is without a job and this is due to an “oversupply” which will be met in the years to come as airlines grow their fleet, according to Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) chief Arun Kumar.
“There are nearly 9,000 pilots currently employed with Indian carriers. Add to that those who work for non-scheduled operators such as charter aircraft of private players as well as State governments. Then a couple of thousands have gone to foreign airlines such as Qatar. If you add all these numbers, you will have 13,000 pilots in total. But there are still nearly 5,000 to 6,000 pilots who are out there in the market looking for a job,” Mr. Kumar told The Hindu in an interview as he gets ready to hang his boots after nearly four years as the DGCA Director-General, which followed his nine-year-long tenure at the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MCA) where he also oversaw airports as well as Economic Affairs.
“There is no guarantee that everybody who is trained to be a pilot will have a job instantly. It takes three to five years for them to find a job,” the top officer explains. “We recently hired a pilot at the DGCA who was teaching science and maths in Bahadhurgarh in Haryana.”
Many pilots often are forced to look for other jobs as unemployment for a long time results in their licences getting expired and renewing them costs more money. For example, a gap of three years will require a pilot to get type-rating [rating for a specific aircraft type] afresh, which could entail an expenditure of ₹16.5 lakh.
Dismissing concerns over an acute shortage of pilots voiced by some airline officials heading flight operations, the senior official said that there was in fact an excess supply of pilots.
“Last year we saw a record number of licences issued – 1,200 for co-pilots and 600 for commanders. While there is no dearth of pilots for narrowbodies such as Airbus A320s and Boeing widebodies such as B777s, we do face issues with smaller aircraft such as Q400 and ATR,” the officer said.
“So, on the issue of pilots I don’t see a problem. In fact, we are a human resource rich country,” the DG asserted.
The issue of pilot shortage has come to the fore once again following Air India’s announcement last week to add 470 twin-and single-aisle aircraft from Airbus and Boeing and induct them over a 10-year period. Those closely familiar with Air India’s operational requirements, as reported in The Hindu on February 19, say that the airline will need to quickly ramp up pilot hiring, and induct as many as “7,000-8,000” pilots. But they have also raised doubts on how such a large-scale hiring could take place when the airline was already grappling with a shortage of pilots, which has lately also forced it to cancel some of its flights to the U.S. and Europe.
On Friday, Air India announced that it will hire 900 pilots and 4,200 cabin crew in 2023 alone.
Speaking on the recent controversy involving a male passenger urinating over a woman co-traveller on an Air India flight from New York to Delhi on November 26 which went unreported, the officer said that there was a “cover-up” by the airline which had failed to report the errant passenger to the police as well as inform the DGCA about the incident. The episode could have potentially endangered the safety of the aircraft and passengers onboard. Mr. Kumar said the crew also failed to perform their duty.
“You can’t stay away from your responsibility. They have to follow the Civil Aviation Requirement [rules] for unruly passengers and initiate the process of reporting. The crew can’t sit in judgment and decide whether there was an offence or not. That’s the job of the police,” said Mr. Kumar who imposed a fine of ₹30 lakh on the airline and suspended the pilot-in-command for three months after the incident attracted media attention last month.
On the critical issue of the DGCA’s own capabilities to ensure oversight over the civil aviation sector at a time of rapid growth, in particular its staff crunch, the Director-General said that there were plans to ramp up recruitment and take the total staff strength from 700 at present to 1,100 in the next two years, and add a total of 1,000 technical personnel by 2030 to ensure oversight.
There have also been demands for more rigorous financial audits of airlines to assess their capacity to better maintain their aircraft and provide safe operations – last year the regulator pulled up SpiceJet for failing to pay vendors for spare parts and maintenance resulting in its failure to provide reliable services, and also grounded 50% of its fleet for eight weeks.
Mr. Kumar said that the regulator has a “a limited role” as airline business is an “economic and a private enterprise.” Aviation consultancy firm CAPA has often said that there is a need to ensure that airlines have 5-6 months of reserves to ensure continuity of operations and to raise the minimum threshold of ₹50 crore needed to start an airline.