Some Indian pilots qualify after just 35 minutes in air

NEW DELHI — Mr Anupam Verma has a certificate that shows he has flown an aircraft for 360 hours. He says he got it after sitting in the co-pilot’s seat for just 35 minutes.

He is one of dozens of pilots in India who obtained certificates showing inflated flying hours and ground training, according to court documents and interviews with pilots, regulators and industry analysts. The son of a poor farmer, Mr Verma was given a 2.8 million-rupee (S$59,432) subsidy by the Indian government to learn to fly a commercial jet.

“What if I was flying and had an emergency? I wouldn’t even know how or where to land,” Mr Verma, 25, said in an interview. “We’d kill not only the passengers, but we might crash in a village and kill even more people.”

The spotlight on aviation safety has swung from aircraft reliability to pilot reliability recently after a series of disasters that were thought to be either deliberate acts of destruction, or the result of inadequate training. The latest, in March, killed 150 people when Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz allegedly locked his captain out of the cockpit and flew the jet into a mountain.

Last year, a Malaysia Airlines jet with 239 on board mysteriously changed course en-route to Beijing, heading thousands of kilometres into the Indian Ocean. The plane still has not been found and the cause of the disaster remains unknown.

Concern about the quality of India’s pilots has been building over the past decade as a proliferation of budget airlines created demand for hundreds of new pilots. In 2011, the government reviewed the licences of all 4,000-plus airline pilots in the country, as police investigated at least 18 people suspected of using forged documents to win promotions or certification.

Chennai-based aviation safety consultant Mohan Ranganathan said the 2011 audit found violations in most flying clubs. “Hours were logged with aircraft not even in airworthy condition. One aircraft had no engines but several hundred hours were logged.”

Asked about the continued use of fake certificates, India’s director-general of civil aviation, Ms M Sathiyavathy, said on April 24 the directorate would be conducting a new audit that would require the “recertification of all the flying schools”.

Over-logging has been common practice in India since the 1960s, according to a retired commander who has flown in India for over 40 years and asked not to be named. With the increase in budget airlines, the typical number of faked hours rose from about 20 hours to as much as 150, he said. He said airlines can soon tell if a pilot has faked certificates because they do not have basic skills, but cannot fire them because they have DGCA licences. To bring them up to scratch, airlines have to do expensive corrective training.

For people like Mr Verma, a government grant to learn flying is a chance to escape poverty. His father supports his family of seven by selling vegetables grown on a small plot of land.

Mr Verma enrolled in December 2009 at flying school Yash Air. On his first day, he was taken on a 35-minute “air-experience” flight. Moments after the aircraft landed, he was handed a certificate of flying for 360 hours, he said in an interview on June 1. He said he was told he would do the actual flying during the course, but he eventually flew for just three hours at the school.

Mr Verma complained to the school and sued for return of the money he paid. The Allahabad High Court ordered that his fees be returned, according to a court order in February this year.

Even with the minimum 200 hours mandated by the Indian government, pilots would unlikely have experienced all the weather and other conditions they are likely to meet flying a commercial jet, said Mr Neil Hansford, an Australian aviation consultant who has worked in the industry since 1984.

Airlines should hire pilots with at least 1,000 hours flight time and preferably match the 1,500 hours mandated by Qantas Airways, he said. Pilots in countries like Australia often gain years of experience in general aviation before flying jetliners. That will test a pilot in a variety of conditions, so “when the chips are down, they still remember the basics of stick-and-rudder flying”, Mr Hansford said. “The wrong time to be challenged is when you have 300 people behind you.”

For budget airlines, that is often not an option. Singapore’s Tiger Airways said it hires multi-crew or commercial pilot licensees with about 200 flying hours, then gives them further training. Seoul-based Asiana Airlines looks for at least 300 hours, said spokesman Im Daewoong. “Realistically, it’s difficult to get a non-military person with more than 300 flying hours,” he said.

Carriers also use simulators and other ground training to improve a pilots’ experience.

While American schools use a Hobbs Metre, which automatically logs flight times and other data for training aircraft, some Indian schools enter flight times by hand, making it easier to falsify data. Data can be falsified by running cars on aviation fuel to avoid a mismatch between flight times and fuel consumption, said three people who have worked directly with Indian flying schools.

India’s government has made successive efforts to stamp out false documentation and improve safety in the industry. India is putting in “a lot of effort” to ensure safety of airline passengers and student pilots, Ms Sathiyavathy said. But under-trained pilots continue applying for jobs with the nation’s biggest airlines. One qualified pilot, who asked not to be named because it may harm his career, said he completed fewer than 120 of the 200 hours his certificates say he has done. He said he is applying to fly for IndiGo, the nation’s biggest carrier, but has not been hired.

As for Mr Verma, who passed the entrance exam to government-owned Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Uran Akademi, he is looking forward to finally learning to fly this year. BLOOMBERG