Jet Airways planning to enhance their existing strength of pilots
India’s largest private airline company Jet Airways has said that they are planning to massively increase their pilot strength from the current 550. The Indian aviation market is growing fast and there is already a massive shortage of trained pilots in the market.
Wolfgang Prock-Schauer, chief executive officer, Jet Airways confirmed this in a statement: “To cater to our expanding fleet and operations, we are aggressively looking at having 1400 pilots by the year 2008”.
This news also inflates the rumors that many pilots from Air Sahara would not be interested in continuing with the company after it is merged with Jet Airways. In fact, Kingfisher Airlines has claimed that they are receiving quite many applications from existing Air Sahara pilots for joining their company.
Jet Airways is already facing a shortage of around 10% when it comes to requirement of pilots for flying their planes. The company has however clarified that they have no plans to poach away pilots from their competitors. Prock-Schauer added on this: “The pilots will be mostly expatriates and in-house pilots who will be trained on our new simulator to be delivered this year”.