Taking the aerial route

a very limited number of students if you compare them to their foreign counterparts,”

Captain Vinshu Arora is a Delhi-based pilot with a commercial carrier, who did his flying course from the Flight Safety Academy in Florida, United States — one of the best in the world. He now has 2,000-plus flying hours to his name. We asked him why aspiring pilots in India tend to choose foreign schools over the ones present here. “I chose to go overseas as the duration of the course back then was lesser than what it was in India,” he says. “Also, the teaching quality and infrastructure over there were better. If you plan to spend lakhs on pilot training in India, why not add a few more and go abroad to get an altogether better quality of education.”

Situated in Pondicherry, Oriental Flight School receives around 20-25 applications a year. Pinky Agarwal is the manager there. “Indian students choose to go overseas,” she said, “as they think the courses over there take less time, but they don't consider the fact that once they return to India the time taken to convert their foreign CPL [commercial pilot licence] to the one approved in India can take a long time. They end up spending another few months, or years at times. So over all, the time taken to get a CPL in India is almost the same. Course fee overseas at times can even prove to be cheaper than in India if the academy you select is not among the best ones.”

A degree in the West can indeed cost you a fortune. Nimish Ghandat, now a Bangalore- based commercial pilot, went to a flying school in India — to the Academy of Carver Aviation Limited in Baramati, Maharashtra. “The fee structure,” he says, “will not be that different if you compare a good flying school abroad with one in India, but you must understand that the living expenses there are huge. So even if the difference is, say, of a few lakhs here and there, the living expenses make a foreign degree way more expensive, at times twice as expensive.”

Anyhow, flying schools, whether in India or elsewhere, are meant only for people with deep pockets. A good university overseas, plus the living expenses, should easily set you back by Rs 50 lakh, if not more.

So is it all worth it? In financial terms, what are the returns on this investment? “The average salaries of a first officer, which is the designation given to a cub pilot, is between Rs 1.25 lakh to Rs 2 lakh a month depending upon the airline. That's for domestic carriers. It is a bit higher in the case of international airlines,” explains former pilot Captain Amit Vij, who is now a flight instructor. “Meanwhile, a captain makes between Rs 5-8 lakh again depending upon the airline and route. So return on the investment is good. But also remember that all this happens when you get a job. Because after completion of the course one needs to get the CPL which is very difficult to obtain in India. The DGCA exams can be tough to crack.”

The aviation job market in India, especially from the standpoint of commercial pilots, is now beginning to look bullish, after the recent lull of the last few years.

“The years between 2006 to, say, 2010 was the most amazing period for us pilots as several airlines — like IndiGo, Go Air, Kingfisher — were up and coming, and all of them needed pilots. But later on, as everything settled, there were hardly any new ventures emerging, so things slowed down quite a lot,” said Captain Vinshu Arora.

The unexpected shutdown of Kingfisher Airlines, too, had its adverse impact on the market. As per Captain Nimish Ghandat, “After completing my course I was unemployed for several years, for there was no hiring happening anywhere. The airlines that were hiring preferred to hire Kingfisher pilots as it had shut down around the time I graduated, so the market was full of experienced pilots willing to work for less money as they had not been paid for months.”

The aviation sector, like any other, has its ups and downs. Some say that the rise and fall here is cyclical — every few years things improve, and boom-time ends once the bubble is burst. “I agree that the last few years have proved to be difficult for this sector,” said Captain Mahyavanshi of Ambitions Aviation Academy. “But in my opinion the next two years will be the best time to enter this industry.”

“The fee structure will not be that different if you compare a good flying school abroad with one in India, but you must understand that the living expenses there are huge.” “The average salaries of a first officer, which is the designation given to a cub pilot, is between Rs 1.25 to Rs 2 lakh a month depending upon the airline.”