Fly By Luck

Providence Prevails

Here are some recent instances of narrow misses on flights that were commandeered by foreign pilots:

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

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Outlook

How does the government plan to tackle the problem? Prasad says his ministry has requested the Indian Air Force (IAF) to recruit more pilots than it requires so as to create a pool from which they can be sent to government-run airlines on deputation for a few years. This step has the approval of the IAF which is also facing a pilot shortage. It has been losing its men to private carriers. By allowing pilots the option of going on deputation to Indian and Air India, which pays higher salaries than the force, the government plans to hold on to them in the IAF.

The civil aviation ministry is also hiring retired IAF pilots for commercial operations and for its aviation school. Retired Air Vice Marshal S.P. Malan was recently put in charge of the country's only flying school, the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Uran Academy in Rae Bareli. It is also hiring retired IAF pilots as instructors. Prasad says the aim is to increase the capacity of the academy so that more pilots can be trained. "At present, only 30 pilots come out of the academy every year. By the end of this year, we hope to train 45 pilots and take it up to 100 by next year," he adds.

Another training academy is being set up at Gondia in Maharashtra's Vidarbha region. The Planning Commission has already cleared Rs 40 crore for it. The academy is expected to start functioning from next year, initially training 50 pilots a year.

The government is also encouraging the revival of some of the private flying clubs, whose operations have become limited over the years due to lack of resources and infrastructure. While many of them have shut down, about half-a-dozen functional ones have been identified for revival in cooperation with the Aero Club of India. A sum of Rs 15 crore has been earmarked for the purpose.

Everyone in the aviation business agrees that the pilot shortage problem needs to tackled before the situation spins out of control. Clearly, ad hoc measures will not do. Also, some ground rules have to be laid down before an airline hires a foreign pilot. So far the industry has been lucky that there have been no accidents. But how long can it play with the lives of passengers?

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