Airlines win pilot battle

New Delhi: Strong protest from leading Indian carriers today forced the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to withdraw a circular that would have raised the cost of flying abroad substantially.
A draft circular issued by the DGCA on June 17 had said that any pilot of a wide-body aircraft (these are used mostly for overseas flights) should have a flying experience of at least 7,000 hours, including 2,000 hours on a jet aircraft and 1,500 hours on a wide-body aircraft on international routes.
The current rule just requires the pilot to have flown around 100 hours on a wide-body aircraft as a co-pilot on any route. Since most Indian pilots do not have the experience of flying international routes, airlines would have had to employ expatriate pilots, thereby considerably inflating their salary bills. An expatriate pilot costs over 100 per cent more than his Indian counterpart.
The circular came at a time when the Indian carriers are desperately trying to reduce their salary costs by replacing their expatriate work force with an Indian one. They are expected to close the current financial year with a total loss of Rs 8,000 crore, almost double the last year's losses.
"The decision was taken after a heated meeting with the DGCA in which most airlines aggressively thumbed down the circular. One or two airlines, which would not have been impacted, supported it but were snubbed by others," said a source present in the meeting.
27/06/08 Anirban Chowdhury/Business Standard

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Categories: Foreign Jun 2008, Indian Aviation- In General Jun 2008