Pilot Shortages in India

Pilot Shortages in India

Welcome aboard flight Indian Aviation. We are currently cruising at a high airspeed as a thousand more aircraft are set to take to the Indian skies after the Covid-19 lull. The weather looks good with the tailwind on our side as air travel demand is exploding among Indian passengers. But please be warned of a delay in reaching our destination as a great turbulence awaits: There may not be enough experienced pilots in the country to fly the thousand new planes.

Take a look at the numbers. Indian airlines have placed orders for at least 1,115 planes to be delivered over the next decade, with a bulk of them expected to come in after 2025. A narrow-body commercial plane that flies on domestic routes requires 14-16 pilots to ensure smooth operations, while a wide-body aircraft needs 24-26 pilots, per industry standards. As India has only a small proportion of wide-body planes, a conservative estimate of 15-16 pilots per plane means 17,000-18,000 pilots are required over the next decade. That is, 1,700-1,800 per year on an average. But the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) registers only 600-750 commercial pilot licence (CPL) holders every year. “We will be off by 100 per cent within a few years. Even a 5-10 per cent shortage is considered a manpower challenge in any industry. So, if there’s a 100 per cent shortage, it could mean you are dead and buried,” says Hemanth D.P., CEO of Asia Pacific Flight Training Academy. Incidentally, India currently has 9,000 pilots who fly its 700 aircraft.

Aviation advisory and research firm CAPA India estimates that 150-175 of the new planes will arrive in 2024, and require 1,800-2,000 more pilots to fly them. “We need to triple our capacity,” says Udit Agarwal, Team Lead, CAPA India. C.S. Randhawa, Secretary of the Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP), points out that the shortage is particularly of experienced captains with 3,000 flying hours (which is four to five years of flying experience) under their belts. As he sees the 1,100 ordered planes arriving within five years, he estimates India needs 1,400 captains (pilots) and 1,400 first officers (co-pilots) every year. “You may find first officers in the market because there are more than 2,000 unemployed CPL holders. But I don’t foresee the industry producing more than 130 captains cumulatively. The shortfall is over 1,100 captains. Where will they come from?”

Even though Go First has filed for bankruptcy, experts point out that the aircraft ordered by it can easily be picked up by other airlines given the rising air travel demand among Indians.

Former DGCA chief Arun Kumar pointed out in February that one in three trained pilots is without a job, which works out to more than 4,000 CPL holders. But, as experts say, many of them are not just unemployed but unemployable. India also lacks sufficient qualified trainers and quality infrastructure. Some schools allow over-logging of flying hours to fulfil the mandatory requirement of 200 hours and students lack solo flying experience, says Hemanth. Government data shows there were eight accidents in 2022 involving aircraft of DGCA-approved flying training organisations (FTOs). Last year, DGCA suspended the licences of 92 pilots for violating safety norms, which was more than double the 2021 figure. “If a pilot is just about able to make it, training schools give them an okay,” says Amit Singh, Founder of Safety Matters Foundation, an NGO. Flying school trainers are usually those who couldn’t become commercial pilots. They have little flying experience and the trainees, in turn, do not have a strong foundation, he adds.

A long-drawn process To be sure, a pilot shortage is a medium-term problem. The cracks will become apparent once fleet induction starts, say experts. But the catch is that pilot training takes up to two years from start to finish. Plus, there is a six- to seven-month lead time between hiring and flying as the pilots have to go through airline-specific training. “The structural capacity is not available to provide [training to] these pilots,” says CAPA’s Agarwal. There are only 35 DGCA-approved FTOs and seven approved simulators in India. That is why an estimated 30-40 per cent of aspirants go abroad for pilot training, especially to Europe, New Zealand and Australia. That’s not only a huge drain on the Indian exchequer when the country already suffers from a forex crunch, but the high costs of training also mean that many of them prefer to stay back. The current pilot-aircraft balance is also a result of airlines sucking up pilots who were laid off and the pilots produced during the Covid-19 years. “Two years down the line, you’ll also have a problem of co-pilots because the backlog and unemployment will also get used up,” says FIP’s Randhawa.

For instance, Air India is already facing a crunch. “The Boeing 777 and [Airbus] A320 fleets have a pilot shortage because we have started getting new aircraft. Other aircraft that were in maintenance have also come back. But the training is not as fast as aircraft arrival,” says a member of the Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA), requesting anonymity. ICPA represents 900 narrow-body pilots of Air India.

The airline, now a part of the Tata group, has issued an advertisement to hire more than 1,000 pilots. Last year, it sent a letter to 55 retired pilots with plans to rehire them. “To get direct commanders (captains) suddenly is very tough with the kind of salaries it is offering,” the ICPA member adds. Air India pilots and cabin crew have complained about the new salary structure that guarantees fixed pay for 40 hours. “But IndiGo pays for a blanket 70 hours even if you go on leave. That’s why a lot of pilots are not willing to join Air India,” the member adds. Air India has also been leasing planes before their ordered planes arrive because of increased demand. Others such as Vistara, Akasa Air and IndiGo have also begun receiving new planes.

BT’s requests for comments to Air India, IndiGo, SpiceJet and Akasa Air went unanswered till the time of going to press.

Tough times ahead

The ripples have already reached the flight training industry. “FTOs have lost up to 40-50 per cent of experienced instructors to airlines and this trend will only increase as more aircraft are delivered,” says Hemanth, adding that a shortage of instructors is a double whammy. Ultimately, airlines need experienced pilots. So, there will be a large influx of foreign pilots through Foreign Aircrew Temporary Authorization (FATA) which is a temporary nod by DGCA to hire expat pilots, says Randhawa. “If an Indian captain earns Rs 8 lakh a month, foreign captains get Rs 12 lakh. That’s the disparity where you demoralise your own people by giving more money to expats.” Besides, many experienced pilots in India are looking to join international carriers, especially Middle-eastern ones. “Once airlines like Qatar Airways and Emirates start getting their new aircraft, the pilots from here would like to go there because the pay and work-life balance are much better there,” says a First Officer with IndiGo who has been flying for four and a half years.

A bigger concern is that the situation, as it stands today, is only to cater to the demand of planes on order. But India, the fastest growing aviation market and third largest market globally, is woefully underserved with 700 aircraft. China has 7,000 aircraft. “Planes are going full and ticket rates are touching the sky, which is a good sign for the industry and clearly means more capacity is required,” says Hemanth. “There are 200 million domestic and international passengers in India currently. In 2043, we may reach 1.3-1.6 billion passengers,” says CAPA’s Agarwal.

Union Minister for Civil Aviation Jyotiraditya Scindia said at the BT MindRush event in April that India has 94 per cent penetration of air travel left to achieve. “Out of the 1.38 billion people in our country, 144 million travel by air. Of those, many are repeat travellers. So, the penetration rate in India is hardly 3-4 per cent,” he had said. Airlines are also cognisant of the untapped opportunity. Akasa Air CEO Vinay Dube has said India’s youngest airline plans to place a “significant triple-digit order” in 2023.

A pilot shortage could have a multi-pronged impact on the entire ecosystem, with the foremost being overworked and fatigued pilots putting passenger lives at risk. Under DGCA’s Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL), pilots are allowed to log in a maximum 8 hours of flying a day, 35 hours a week, 125 hours a month and 1,000 hours a year. But pilots allege that the guidelines have been created without adequate focus on Indian conditions. “Airlines use the FDTL to its outer limit without any thought. It has a cascading effect of fatigued pilots,” says the ICPA member, adding that the process to report fatigue at some airlines is so intimidating that pilots would much rather drag themselves to fly. A recent survey of 542 pilots by Safety Matters Foundation showed that 66 per cent of them admitted to falling asleep without planning/consent of the other crew or experienced micro sleep.

DGCA did not respond to BT’s queries on the pilot shortage in the country.

Fewer pilots can also lead to a skewed demand-supply of planes in the air and in turn send airfares soaring. “Now that fare caps have been removed, we could see fare spikes in the medium term due to a capacity reduction,” says CAPA’s Agarwal. Grounded planes also bleed revenue for airlines and airports. An airline could lose out on Rs 100 crore of potential revenues a year by grounding one 186+-capacity jet for two to three main sector flights a day, estimates Hemanth, a former chief commercial officer at GMR Hyderabad International Airport. “Airports, ideally, do not want parked planes. If one plane occupies a parking slot during peak time for three hours, I lose that many more customers.”

Overall, experts say, pilot shortage is a lose-lose-lose situation for passengers, airlines and the country. Ramping up indigenous training infrastructure is the only long-term solution. Until then, it may be hard to sit back, relax and enjoy the rest of the flight.