A controversy has been raging for quite some time over the employment of foreign pilots in scheduled carriers registered in India.
Indian pilots are peeved at the continuation of foreign pilots and claim that the foreigners are paid more than them. However, airlines deny this. Some of the airlines also recruit foreign pilots from recruitment agencies which charge a fee. There have also been allegations levelled by pilot unions which say that some of these recruitment agencies are owned by relatives of former airline officials. Foreign pilots are not represented by any unions and are relied upon by airlines wary of industrial action by Indian pilots.
The government’s stand is that “airlines in India are allowed to bring expatriate pilots only on the basis of their plan for phasing out foreign pilots and training Indian pilots to replace the foreign pilots”.
The government has argued that the civil aviation sector in the country is facing a shortage of pilots trained to fly certain types of aircraft.
Just last month, the civil aviation ministry had announced that approval had been granted for extension in employment of foreign expatriate pilots by airlines for one year upto July 31, 2011. The validation of foreign licences were originally meant to be valid only till July 31 this year.
The pilot of the ill-fated Boeing aircraft that crashed at Mangalore, Capt. Z. Glusica, was a British national of Serbian origin and had been working with Air India Express for the past two years. The government said it was too premature to spell out the cause of the crash but said there was no distress call made by the pilots to the ATC and that the aircraft had landed beyond the prescribed “touchdown zone” at the runway leading to the aircraft over-shooting the runway and hitting a valley.
But the government pointed out that Capt. Glusica was a very experienced pilot with 10,200 hours of flying experience who had made 19 previous landings at Mangalore.