Cockpit fraud: fears grow over India's fake pilots

NEW DELHI — India's fake pilot scandal began unravelling when a female captain landed her packed airliner on the nose instead of the rear wheels as she touched down in the holiday hotspot of Goa.Parminder Kaur Gulati, flying for the fastest-growing airline in the booming Indian sector, IndiGo, was investigated for the dangerous error in January and was found with falsified qualifications. She has since been fired and arrested.The case set alarm bells ringing for passengers, anxious about the idea of a semi-trained fraud being responsible for their lives, and for airline bosses, who have been hiring crew at a furious pace in recent years.It also cast a spotlight on a familiar problem in India, where corruption is widely seen as on the rise: most things, even qualifications for highly skilled jobs, can be bought at a price."It's as bad as doctors or surgeons who fake their certificates and put people's lives at risk," says Baijayant Panda, a member of parliament from the eastern state of Orissa."But it's not limited to aviation in India. In many fields, you have a lot of fakery going on," the lawmaker, seen as part of a new breed of young Indian politicians, told a debate show on NDTV television last week.Since the discovery of Gulati, at least five other pilots have been arrested working for low-cost flier SpiceJet, national flag carrier Air India and smaller regional airline MDLR.India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), which is responsible for pilot examinations and granting licences, has announced it will look into the credentials of 4,000 commercial airline pilots.More arrests are expected.Amid rising anxiety, attention has focused on a small school in the arid west of the country, the Rajasthan State Flying School, which has been running for the last 10 years.Two of its alumni, working for SpiceJet, were arrested on Monday."A pilot needs to have completed a minimum 200 hours of flying to get a licence. Several of the pilots from there had only completed 50-60 hours," Umesh Mishra, from Ra

Add comment

Nick
Content

Submit