THE AERIAL ROUTE

Becoming a commercial pilot may seem like a great career option that youngsters dream about, but only a select few are actually able to meet the many challenges and surpass the trial-by-fire of an extensive pilot training course. Anirudh Vohra explores ho

The hope of one day being able to fly has been among the most cherished dreams of mankind, achieved more fully than anyone could have imagined just over hundred years back through the magic of aviation. If you ask a child what he or she wants to be when they grow up, the word “pilot”, more often than not, is likely to recur, and for a good reason. To be a pilot, then, is to really live the dream. But let us not forget, becoming a pilot is no child’s play.

The trial-by-fire of an average pilot training course is something that only a select few can suffer through, let alone accomplish. It’s a rigourous process that begins with a screening round intensive enough to let only the fittest (aviation is a Darwinian world) pass on to the subsequent stages of the training regime. Each day, the trainee spends hours on end to master the finest nuances of aerodynamics, every theoretical tidbit having to do with flying. Besides, there’s all that time to be spent within the claustrophobic, shaky confines of flight simulators, before you get to lay your hands on the real thing.

Aside from all the glamour attached to being a pro pilot, it is also a great career opportunity for youngsters. Especially so in this day and age when we’re witnessing an unprecedented boom in the domestic aviation industry. According to the official website of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), there are around 20 licenced airlines operating in the country at present, with another five awaiting their licences. So the scope of landing a high-paying job in this sector is immense.

And there’s only one way to embark upon a full-time career in flying: you need to go through an extensive pilot training course either here or abroad. In India, as per the DGCA, there are around 26 government-run and 12 privately-run aviation schools, where aspiring pilots learn the ropes, the science and craft, of flying.

Captain Dipak Mahyavanshi is a flight instructor at Ambitions Aviation Academy in Aligarh, which receives around 40-50 student applications annually. “We offer two programmes for our students,” he told Guardian 20. “One involves 200 hours of flying on a single-engine aircraft. The other programme offers 190 hours of flying on a singleengine aircraft and another ten hours on a multi-engine aircraft. Along with this, the students also need to undergo 350 hours of ground training, which includes subjects like air regulations, meteorology, navigation, radio navigation and other technical aspects. All this makes the entire duration of the course between 10-12 months.”

The DGCA has set out clear norms and guidelines for those who choose to apply for a pilot training course in India. The applicant, for instance, should be above 17 years of age, and aside from all the required schooling degrees, should present a Class-I medical certificate — a fitness certification system devised especially for pilots which is valid across the world.

The course itself is generally subdivided into three parts: ground training, real air miles, and simulator rounds. The simulators used at these schools are works of art in themselves. They are exact cockpit replicas of a real Airbus or Boeing, coming as close to the actual deal — closely simulating the dy- namics of pitch, lift and yaw — as is scientifically possible. Not to mention, they cost a lot of money. All aviation schools in India don’t have such simulators, and students generally undergo simulator training only after they’ve been hired by some airline.

“The high cost of maintaining and flying the training aircraft, managing the simulators and other equipment trickles down to the students, which in turn makes the fee very high,” Mahyavanshi added. “Thus not a lot of people select flying as a career option and the ones that do, prefer to go overseas. So Indian flying schools have