Daybreak - India has over 10,000 unemployed pilots but airlines can’t hire them

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

Airlines in India, from Indigo to Akasa, are on a spree to expand their fleet. Around a thousand more aircrafts will be flying the Indian skies in the coming few years.Usually, each aircraft usually requires a crew of at least ten or more pilots. This means we will need close to 10,000 pilots. But we already have 10,000 pilots waiting to be hired.The problem is no airline wants to hire them.Why?Tune in to find out.RecommendationAirlines want pilots. Pilots want jobs. Why are thousands unemployed?Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too. It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Raman Ganesh, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they manage to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing, and extensive post-production. Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording.

Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get alert, as soon as we release our first video. episode, please follow intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcast or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode. Airlines in India are on a spree to expand their fleets. Indigo is going to add 500 Airbus aircrafts in the next seven years or so. Air India has ordered 470 planes from Airbus and Boeing.

The new kid on the block Akasa Air, meanwhile, has ordered as many as 76 points. So, a thousand or more aircrafts will be flying our skies in the coming few years. Now, all of these aircrafts will obviously need people to fly them, right? Each aircraft usually requires a crew of 10 or more pilots, which means we will need more or less around 10,000 pilots? That is great, because guess what? We have 10,000 pilots waiting to be hired. Or should I say, we have 10,000 unemployed pilots.

Now, here's the catch. No airline wants to hire them. Why? You see, more than 1,000 pilots get trained and receive flying licenses every year in India. Each one has to spend around 1 crore rupees for the course that takes more than three years to complete. In the end, they get a commercial pilot license or CPL. But the thing is, these flight training organizations are more often than not ill-equipped to give these pilots the skills that they need to get hired. A pilot with a Middle Eastern airline who spoke to the Ken said it like it is.

He said, and I'm quoting, if you own a Bentley, would you hire a driver who drives a Maruti or somebody who's familiar with a SCOTA? Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host, Nick Da Sharma, and I Don't Chase the News Cycle. Instead, thrice a week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I will come to you with one business story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Wednesday, the 6th of September. The entire aviation industry in India is basically pushing hard to recover from the pandemic-induced ruin. Right now, we have around 9,000 pilots flying some.

somewhere close to 700 planes. But we need more, a lot more. Airlines may use tactics like poaching skilled pilots from rivals, but it is unsustainable and honestly, it can't even come close to meeting the actual number of pilots that the industry will need in the coming years. But like I told you, we already have 10,000 freshly minted pilots who have spent years and crores of rupees to get their licenses.

All of them are sitting unemployed. Why? It all goes back to where they get trained. As of now, India has 36 flying training organizations or FTOs. One of them is the Indira Gandhi-R-Gandhi-R-U-A, which is run by the central government. Eight are under state governments and the rest are all privately owned. Each of these institutions have close to 30 students every year. Last year, more than 1,000 commercial pilot licenses were issued by the DGCA or the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.

It was a record number. This year, in the last nine months alone, it has already issued 993 licenses, which means that the number of students that become pilots officially every year is rising. Now, that sounds like a perfect scenario, right, considering how airlines are expanding? yet thousands of pilots are sitting jobless because they don't have enough experience and the right kind of skills. My colleague Nuhabouberi spoke to a bunch of current and former pilots and employees of different airlines and also students in flying training schools. Unfortunately, they did not want the ken to reveal their names because they did not want to be seen commenting on their current and potential employers publicly. Usually, airlines set job requirements for pilots who have years of experience and a high rating.

The total number of employed pilots and co-pilots as of 2020 was just a little over 9,000. Now, this is based on data from the Ministry of Civil Aviation itself. In 2022, this number fell by around 500. In this period, all airlines saw a fall in the number of pilots except for Vistara, which hired one single pilot. The pilot with a Middle Eastern airline who spoke to Nuhat told her that many Indian pilots with commercial pilot licenses are medically unfit, retired, or they do not want to fly. They said that only 5,000 pilots are experienced enough. Almost 70% of them work for Indian Airlines and the rest work for international ones. This is why unemployment is mainly high

at the junior level. Meaning, it is CPL license holders with only 200 to 250 hours of training that are the ones who are sitting jobless. Now, this is a double-edged challenge for those who are training to be pilots. A student at the central government's flight training school explained it to us. They said that the flying process itself is extremely slow. They told again how they have been at the institute for over two years and yet they've completed only 68 hours of flying. Why? We asked a number of people in the industry and they told us

that getting 200 hours of training typically takes three years. To give you context in the US, students can get the same number of hours done in just six, seven months. The infrastructure at these training organizations in India is not up to the standard. Training aircrafts are unable to fly because more than half of the time, they are under repair. all kinds of technical problems keep coming up. And then there is the problem of the number of airports. Some airports do not allow trainees to practice landings, which in turn affects their flight hours.

Now, you may want to ask, what about looking for jobs at international airlines? You see, only a small number of these freshly certified pilots are eligible for international airlines. Because almost all international airlines require an airline transport pilot license or ATPL, unless they specifically go for CPL or commercial pilot license holders through an international cadet initiative. Meanwhile, it is not like the DGCA's policies are helping

these pilots. The DGCA favors airlines who prioritize experienced pilots. You could even say that DGCA regulations work against some pilots. For example, changes like the 2019 flying rule that allowed airlines to put pilots on two consecutive nights of flight operations. Earlier, this was not allowed. Then, there is the longer notice period that favors airlines and not pilots. Basically, the DGCA allows airlines to get away with overworking their pilots without breaking the rules. Dear listeners, this is just a small part of an in-depth story that Noaha had written about.

There are a lot of concerns about safety, unfair contracts and compensation for pilots in India. I highly recommend you read her full report whenever you can find the time. I'm linking the story to the show notes of this episode. Thank you for listening. I'll be back on Friday with a brand new story. Daybreak is produced from the Newsroom of the Ken, India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings, A full subscription unlocks daily long-form feature stories, newsletters, subscriber-only apps and podcast extras. Head to the ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the website.

I am Snigda Sharma, your host and today's episode was edited by my colleague Rajiv Sien.