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Added April 13, 2008
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THE future captains of India's burgeoning airline industry take a breather while waiting for their turn to take the licensing examination at the Philippine Air Transportation Office.
Indians flocking to RP flying
schools on 'boom' forecast
By Recto Mercene
Reporter
INDIA, the seco more
THE future captains of India's burgeoning airline industry take a breather while waiting for their turn to take the licensing examination at the Philippine Air Transportation Office.
Indians flocking to RP flying
schools on 'boom' forecast
By Recto Mercene
Reporter
INDIA, the second economic powerhouse in Asia after China, is preparing itself for a forecast boom in its airline industry by sending 21,000 would-be pilots to learn from other countries, and in the Philippines about 1,000 of them are already learning how to fly.
This was gathered by BusinessMirror from an interview with Ronie Briones, a senior aviation-safety officer of the Air Transportation Office, which issues certificates to qualified pilots, air carriers, airline operators and chartered airline companies.
He said there are also other foreigners learning to fly here but most of them are from India; the rest are from Nepal, Pakistan, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Korea, Japan and China.
The Indians are enrolled in 39 flying schools, 19 of them in the National Capital Region. The rest are scattered in Cebu, Clark, Dumaguete and Zamboanga, where the student- pilot starts by flying the single-seater Cessna 150, Piper Tomahawk or the four-seater Cessna 172.
Aeroflight, one of the flying schools near Villamor Air Base, has about 300 Indian students enrolled and one of them, Manish Pratap Singh, a 20-year-old from Uttar Pradesh, said of the 1,000 Indian students in the Philippines, about 50 to 60 are women.
He said 21,000 fellow Indians are learning how to fly in such places as the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand besides the Philippines.
'This is a very competitive profession. There is a potential need of about 3,000 to 4,000 pilots in the near future but five times of that are enrolled in flying schools all over the world,' said Singh.
Abhimanyu Talwar, another 20-year-old trainee from New Delhi, is enrolled at the Flight and Simulator Training School with a dozen other fellow Indians. He chose to come to the Philippines rather than the US or Australia because it takes less time to graduate here.
'The flying hours required [in the US or Australia] are the same to be a licensed private pilot but I can finish the course here in six months, while it would take me more than a year if I take the same lessons in Australia or New Zealand,' he says.
He pays about P7,000 per hour of flying and would have spent about P2.3 million by the time he has logged about 40 hours to get his private pilot license.
In India, he says that the government requires he should have accumulated 1,500 flying hours before he gets accepted by the airline companies.
According to Briones, many foreigners choose the Philippines over other countries because they can easily get student visas or special student permits.
Nikhil Mittal, 19, from New Delhi, said he finds it easy to study in the Philippines because of the proficiency of the Filipinos in English. He also said it would take him two years to get his license in India because of the lack of training planes and flight instructors.
He is confident of making it as a commercial airline pilot, saying there are 10 or 12 airline companies in his country, Air India being the biggest.
Mittal, whose father is in the pharmaceutical business, said many fellow Indians are taking to the air, lured by a high salary that averages at about $12,500 (P512,500) a month.
Most of the students interviewed by the BusinessMirror agree Philippine flying schools have high standards with very proficient instructors. Mittal said 'the quality is better than India.'
On studying in neighboring Asean countries, Singh said it is difficult to enroll in Bangkok because a would-be pilot needs to be a Thai citizen, while Malaysia enforces a different law when it comes to foreign students wanting to fly there.
Maynard Halili, owner of flying school Airwork, said these Indian students mostly come from well-to-do families, or are sponsored by an Indian company.
Ironically, his school has no Indian student because they accept only corporate or helicopter pilots for advanced training, one of the few schools catering to the 'high-class' status.
Briones said he found the Indian student first rate in passing a grueling examination that encompass rules of the air, navigation, weight-and-balance, meteorology, civil air rules, and search and rescue.
There is a separate test on powerplants, which is about aircraft engines.
Tags india, pilot, philippines, train, high, quality, haryana, ato, Air, transportation, office, asia, plane
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