As Indian aviation prepares for strong growth from 2024, a shortage of technical manpower, especially pilots, may be the greatest strategic risk for the sector, said aviation consulting group Capa India.

At least 1,100 new planes are expected to enter the Indian market in the next decade. Air India has ordered 470 new aircraft, and IndiGo and Akasa Air are set to receive 500 and 55 new planes respectively over the next decade.

According to industry standards, each narrow-body plane requires 14 to 16 pilots, while a wide-body plane doing long-haul routes needs 24 to 26 pilots.

India has about 9,000 pilots for 700 aircraft. Capa India suggests airlines in India will deploy 150 to 175 new aircraft in 2024 and need about 1,800 to 2,000 pilots and 4,000 to 5,000 cabin crew for them.

Mr Amit Thakran, associate practice lead of Capa India, said that the shortage of skilled air and ground staff existed before Covid-19, but with the rapid recovery in air traffic after the pandemic, “this shortage is becoming more apparent and visible”.

Experts say that the historical backlog and inadequate flight-training facilities in India might hinder the growth of skilled aviation manpower.

“New hiring, especially for technical resources such as pilots, engineers, security staff and air traffic controllers, can take up to 18 months,” said Mr Thakran.

The Ministry of Aviation has maintained that India does not have a pilot shortage. In an interview with Indian newspaper The Hindu, then licensing authority Directorate General of Civil Aviation’s director general Arun Kumar, who retired on Feb 28, said there was “in fact an excess supply” of pilots. He dismissed concerns of an acute shortage of pilots in India, pointing to the record number of 1,200 commercial pilot licences (CPLs) issued in 2022.

While Mr Kumar said there was no dearth of pilots for narrow-body aircraft such as Airbus A320s and wide-body planes such as Boeing 777s, he admitted that “we do face issues with smaller aircraft”. Moreover, expanding airlines like Air India will need to induct as many as “7,000 to 8,000” pilots, he said.

A senior pilot, who requested anonymity, explained that a shortage and oversupply of pilots coexisted in India, because “thousands of CPL holders are still unemployed”, waiting to qualify as a co-pilot. A CPL holder needs to train for another 250 hours in simulators and training aircraft to be certified to fly.

The senior pilot said the shortage of training infrastructure was Indian aviation’s real bottleneck. There are 34 flying schools in the country, but there is a “desperate shortage of slots for simulators and fully qualified instructors”.

-B