INDIGO, the country’s largest airline, both in terms of the number of aircraft and market share, created history on June 19 when it placed the largest-ever order for aircraft with a mega deal for 500 Airbus A320neo family planes, at the Paris Air Show. For a country that loves the numbers game, there was unbridled pride in the Indigo order. And delight that it had beaten another numbers record – again by an airline from India – Air India that in February ordered 470 Airbus and Boeing aircraft.
“IndiGo’s order is larger than the fleet that India had in 2014. India has set another landmark with this largest ever recorded order by a carrier with any aircraft manufacturer in the world,” Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said, and added, “This landmark transaction is close to the heels of the Air India order. India has set another landmark with this largest-ever recorded order by a carrier with any aircraft manufacturer around the world. This order will act as an economic and employment multiplier.” Scindia said.
Growing aviation
Scindia is right; Indian aviation is growing at a ridiculous 20 per cent plus year-onyear, something that one superannuated Civil Aviation Secretary once described as “unreal and undesirable”. While the aircraft will keep coming in from the Airbus and Boeing assembly lines with military precision (although that too has taken a serious beating thanks to the Ukraine war and supply chain issues with China), the manpower on the ground, or for that matter, required in the air, is simply not available.
Manpower challenge
Business Today, in a piece on this predicament just days before the Indigo order, said: “Take a look at the numbers.
Indian airlines have placed orders for at least 1,115 planes to be delivered over the next decade, with a bulk of them expected to come in after 2025.
A narrow-body commercial plane that flies on domestic routes requires 14-16 pilots to ensure smooth operations, while a wide-body aircraft needs 24-26 pilots, per industry standards. As India has only a small proportion of wide-body planes, a conservative estimate of 15-16 pilots per plane means 17,000-18,000 pilots are required over the next decade. That is 1,700-1,800 per year on average.
But the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) registers only 600-750 commercial pilot licence (CPL) holders every year. “We will be off by 100 per cent within a few years. Even a 5-10 per cent shortage is considered a manpower challenge in any industry. So, if there’s a 100 per cent shortage, it could mean you are dead and buried,” says Hemanth DP, CEO of Asia Pacific Flight Training Academy. Incidentally, India currently has 9,000 pilots who fly its 700 aircraft.” Last August, in a written answer in the Rajya Sabha, Scindia said that the country now had 141 operational airports in the country, which include eight heliports, and two waterdromes.
According to him, there were 74 airports with scheduled operations in the country till 2014 – which meant that the number of airports had nearly doubled in the last nine years. Scindia also indicated that the fleet would grow by eight-ten per cent each year and “demand of pilots by 2025 depends upon the traffic and expansion of the fleet by airlines. Given the fleet projection, it is felt that India may require around 1,000 pilots per annum over the next five years.”
Ecosystem required
The fact is that India’s market doubles every decade, which means not only more and more aircraft to cater to this phenomenal growth but more and more terminals, more staff on the ground, more pilots, more air traffic controllers and enormous investment in infrastructure and all the allied paraphernalia that goes with the aviation business – engineering, catering, ATC professionals, seasoned regulators and a determination to create an ecosystem that can provide a continuous stream of high-quality professionals to take on these responsibilities.
What the Indigo order has demonstrated is that India’s emergence as a top aviation marker is no fluke. It has also reaffirmed that the Indian system can produce world-class airlines like 6E and AI that can compete with the best in the world. But to be top of the game one has to have the resources. The airports are there, the aircraft are on order, and the airlines have proved their mettle (although there have been many groundings over the years including the latest GoFirst) over long years. As the future beckons, it is time to chart the blueprint to not fill the planes but find and train the people who will make sure that the aviation growth story of 20 per cent plus continues through the next decade.
