State-owned
Air India is hiring over 80 junior pilots for its wide-body Boeing B777 and
B787 aircraft to meet the shortage of cockpit crew. The process to induct these
first officers or co-pilots is in the final stage and they are expected to join
Air India by next month, an airline source said.
Air
India currently has about 170 co-pilots to steer its 15 B777 and 23 B787 planes
as against a requirement of over 370, the source said. It is scheduled to take
delivery of four more Boeing 787 as well as three B777 between July this year
and March next year.
The
airline operates these planes majorly on its long and ultra-long haul routes. “As
many as 95 candidates were selected for the simulator test after they cleared
the written examination. Of these, 85 could clear the simulator test and they
are now in the process of joining Air India,” the source said.
These
candidates are already type rated on narrow body Boeing 737 and conversion as
pilots for the wide-body B737 can be done easily, he said. “Conversion from a
narrow body Boeing pilot to a wide-body Boeing aircraft pilot is easier than
from Airbus to Boeing or vice versa as the training period then gets reduced
from eight sessions to about four sessions,” the source said.
This,
in turn, reduces the type rating cost as well, he said. Of the 85 co-pilots who
are expected to join the airline in May, 45 are likely to be deployed on B777s and
the remaining 40 on B787s, he said.
Type
rating is a regulating agencies’ certification given to a pilot to fly a
certain aircraft type that requires additional training, which involves huge
cost, beyond the scope of the initial license and aircraft class training.
According
to the source, a B777 requires a set (each set has two pilots) of 13 pilots (26
pilots) and a set of eight pilots (16 pilots) is needed for operating a Boeing
787. There are nearly 90 co-pilots currently on B777 fleet and 80 first
officers on B787s. “Going by the standard requirement, the airline needs at
least 195 co-pilots for 15 B777s and 184 for 23 B787s. Moreover, seven more
such planes are going to be added in the fleet in the next one year. So even
after inducting 85 more pilots, the shortage will remain,” the source added.
