Jet Airways school to groom own pilots

Mumbai: Jet Airways has decided to start a flight academy to groom its own pilots in order to deal with the acute shortage of trained cockpit crew.
“We want to start our own flight academy to create our pilots from scratch,” Jet Airways chairman Naresh Goyal said here today. “We want all our flights to be flown by Indian pilots and what better way than to train them ourselves.”
Like all other airlines in India, Jet is facing a severe shortage of trained pilots. Jet is also planning to launch a cargo airline soon. “We are not looking at foreign equity capital for that. We are in the process of studying the freight business to see how we can get into it and make some money,” Goyal said.
The aviation boom has seen an increased number of airlines taking to the skies and has severely dented the profit margins of most. Rising fuel costs and lower load factors have dented most bottomlines. “The cargo business can actually act as a cushion for the loss of profitability,” Goyal added.
30/04/06 Calcutta Telegraph

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