As the demand for pilots in the Navy is set to rise in the coming years, Indian Navy will send its first batch of pilots to a civil aviation training institute in Uttar Pradesh to find out if the centre, which is training commercial pilots for close to two decades, is good enough for the men in service uniform.
The first batch of 20 officers will begin their six-month long basic flight training course at Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Uran Akademi (IGRUA) at Rae Bareli on May 27. The rookie pilots will take off in DA-40 aircraft from a runaway at Fursutganj.
Till now, the?Navy was sending its would-be aviators to the Indian Air Force flight training institutes for basic training after which they were given advanced training in Kiran jet trainer at the naval aviation base in Goa.
But with Kirans set to retire in a year or two, the Navy is getting 17 Hawk advanced jet trainers, which will be stationed at Visakhapatnam (INS Dega). The first Hawk is expected to arrive in July, 2013 and the first batch of advanced flight training will commence from January.
17/05/13 Kalyan Ray/Deccan Herald
