New Delhi: The scare
created by fake pilots among flyers has forced the government to crack
the whip on substandard pilots who could endanger air safety. The
aviation ministry is now weighing if it should disallow licences of
Indians who train as co-pilots from flying schools in countries with
dubious track record. If this comes about, these students won’t be able
to get their foreign commercial pilot licences (CPL) converted to Indian
ones and not be eligible to fly for any desi carrier.
Action on this front has already begun, albeit in a different way. The
DGCA has detected anomalies in the records of students coming from many
flying schools in the Philippines. A team sent there last year
reportedly found some schools which issued log books certifying that
their students had flown the required number of hours to become
co-pilots in a certain aircraft did not even have those types of planes
in their fleet!"Philippines itself is checking these institutes…” sources said.
24/03/11 Saurabh Sinha/
Times of India
