If you're taking a flight today, what are the chances your pilot paid anything from Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh to procure a fake licence? Almost 20%, say flying instructors and examiners, none of whom agreed to be quoted by name. They say at least one in every five pilots recruited in the last five years of the aviation boom is "weak" and could have procured a licence illegally. Conservatively speaking, this means roughly 500 of India's 4000 pilots are "weak".
So how do they bypass the system? Systematically. Flying instructors, ground school teachers and airline sources reveal how it's done:
The flying school A student is meant to clock the mandatory 200 flying hours to be eligible for a commercial pilot's licence (CPL). If a student doesn't have the hours, he can bribe the school and get the requisite certificate. Everyone's happy because the school saves on fuel costs. The chief flying inspector (CFI) can be bribed to fudge personal logbooks.
DGCA inspectors who monitor flying schools have too much on their hands to verify student, plane and journey logbooks. Sometimes, inspectors collude with clubs. With 35 clubs churning out 600 students a year, there is immense scope for fraud.
The ground school A student needs to have attended 350 hours of class from a DGCA-certified school in order to be able to sit for the CPL exams. But if a school is not DGCA-certified, he can bribe the flying club – rates reportedly start at Rs 80,000 and go up to Rs 1 lakh – for a certificate that he attended non-existent classes there. Ground instructors can also be bought, say sources. The CPL and Airline Transport Pilot Licence exams have no proper syllabus, so bribing is said to be frequent.
DGCA touts are said to be the name of the game. The going rate to 'pass' a CPL paper is at least Rs 1.5 lakh. It's Rs 10 lakh for all three ATPL papers. Sources say there are at least seven agents inside the DGCA. When one flying school got tired of the corruption racket, it filed 18 vigilance cases against DGCA staff.
20/03/11 Times of India
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