Despite the ongoing COVID-19 aviation downturn, Hardeep Singh Puri, India’s Civil Aviation Minister, expects there to be a pilot shortage of nearly 10,000 within the next five years.
Puri has said the country will require 9,488 new pilots within the next five years, to keep up with expected growth trends within the nation’s aviation sector.
This will see the number of pilots within India more than double by 2025, given that the current total number of pilots employed with airlines at present is 9,073, said Puri.
According to the aviation minister, between 700 and 800 commercial pilot licences (CPLs) are issued by India’s aviation regulator, DGCA, per year.
Around 30 per cent of these CPLs are awarded to pilots who have been trained in a foreign organisation, Puri added, through either cadetships or private programs, based in the US, Australia and elsewhere.
This news comes despite the COVID-19 pandemic, which continues to see airlines around the world scale back operations dramatically, and staff members laid off from their positions, or placed on leave without pay.
Puri did not expand on his reasoning for the specific figure he provided, however India’s aviation sector has fared better than many, thanks to its domestic network.
During a separate announcement made last week, Puri said that India’s domestic operations were “continuing smoothly”, with the latest figures suggesting a near-total recovery towards pre-COVID travel numbers.
Puri said that over 9 million people had now travelled domestically within India since internal travel restrictions were lifted on 25 March.
According to the International Air Transport Association, India’s domestic aviation market saw the largest growth over any other market in the world four years running, between 2014 and 2018.
By December 2018, India had seen 52 consecutive months of double-digit growth in its domestic aviation operations.
Moreover, government reports suggest strong support for a growing domestic aviation network in India, leading to a better-connected country, and easing congestion on roads and public transport systems.
