Flying schools to be graded for safety, operations soon

Currently there are 38 flying training schools operating at 56 locations across India
| Photo Credit:
NAGARA GOPAL

In a bid to improve transparency, Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) plans to rank pilot training schools based on their operational performance and safety.

The civil aviation regulator has drawn up parameters and weightage would be assigned to each of them. Some of the proposed parameters include aircraft utilisation, number of accidents/incidents, safety observations and other operational aspects like fleet size, instructor to student ratio at the school.

“We have discussed the proposal with flying training organisations and comments have been invited from them. The idea is to improve transparency,” said a senior government official.

Additionally, the training schools have been asked to update their websites with information on availability of aircraft, instructors, time taken to complete flying training, availability of financial assistance etc to enable cadets to make an informed choice.

Currently there are 38 flying training schools operating at 56 locations across the country. In 2024 DGCA issued 1,342 commercial pilot licences. The figure includes certification of locally trained cadets and licence conversion of those trained overseas.

With airlines placing large aircraft orders, India is set to require 20,000 pilots in the near future. Ranking of schools is one of the steps initiated by DGCA under Director General Faiz Ahmed Kidwai to encourage more students to take up flying training in India.

While schools have welcomed the idea regarding website updation, they are not in favour of ranking.

“Why are flying training schools being singled out? The DGCA does not rank airlines, non-scheduled operators or MROs,” an owner of a flying school remarked.

“There are some schools which are new and some several years old. Naturally the older ones have better infrastructure. There has to be a level playing field. Averages should be used like accidents per thousand flights instead of actual,” he said.

The schools have suggested categorisation with a desirable list of standards instead of ranking and have repeated their calls for DGCA to speed up examination and approval processes. Concerns have been raised regarding a shortage of aircraft maintenance engineers and that is reducing aircraft availability and thus slowing down training. “Examinations should be conducted more often and time taken for issuance of licences should be reduced,” an executive from a flying training school said.

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Published on May 18, 2025