There has been a lot of discussion in the media regarding foreign pilots
(also Known as “expat pilots”) in the aftermath of the tragic air accident
at Mangalore. The Minister of Civil aviation, many bureaucrats, airline
officials and even a few journalists have gone to great lengths to explain
how experienced foreign pilots hired by Air India and private airlines are
essential to the Indian aviation industry. A retired spokesperson of Air
India, who has no business to speak on behalf of Air India anymore, has been
repeatedly appearing on television to painstakingly explain how important
foreign pilots are to the company. Clearly the air disaster at Mangalore
with a foreign pilot at the controls has made a lot of powerful people
worried .Very worried.*
*
The point however is not whether foreigners should be allowed in Indian
carriers or not. Some of them are highly experienced and respected
professionals who have undoubtedly made a huge contribution to the Indian
airline industry. This article is not about them. It is about a shady scheme
on gargantuan proportions, backed by government policy and a well oiled
system that feeds on unimaginable corruption, on a scale that would astonish
every innocent fare paying air passenger.

Air India is a government run Public Sector Undertaking and thus, it is
assumed that rules applicable to other government institutions meant to keep
corruption under check would apply to it too. The Ministry of Defence, for
example has strict rules debarring the involvement of private middlemen or
brokers in facilitating defence contracts. Other ministries have strict
guidelines on the recruitment of qualified personnel or consultants where a
transparent tendering process has to be adhered to.

In the case of Air India and its subsidiary Air India Express, such rules do
not seem to apply at all.
Some years ago, the ministry of civil aviation that ran erstwhile Air India
and Indian Airlines, cooked up unrealistic passenger growth projections and
placed massive aircraft orders for Air India and Indian Airlines. Private
airlines only too eager to float shares to rake in public money and
capitalise on the hype jumped in the bandwagon. Overnight, hundreds of
vacancies for pilots were created.

Air India began hiring foreign pilots in 2003.Other reputed companies like
Singapore Airlines and various Gulf Airlines such as Emirates, recruit
foreign nationals too but with great transparency. Foreign pilots hired by
them are a part of the regular workforce and are directly hired, without
involving middlemen, on local terms. European airlines do not hire non EU
nationals.*
*
In Air India’s case, no global tenders were floated for foreign recruitment
firms and no advertisements in newspapers announcing vacancies for foreign
nationals appeared. Bureaucrats and officials in Air India, hand in glove
with their counterparts and politicians in the Ministry of Civil Aviation,
Ministry of Labour, Home Ministry, Ministry of External Affairs and other
agencies hastily cleared the proposal to hire foreign nationals and the
policy of recruiting foreign pilots was established. Politicians of
opposition parties were roped in and a cosy arrangement was made.

To bypass opposition from its own employees and to circumvent elaborate
transparent recruitment procedures and various laws, a defunct subsidiary, Air
India Charters Ltd was revived and used as the vehicle to issue foreigners
contracts. Hence the hundreds of foreign pilots in Air India and Air Express
are routed through Air India Charters Ltd through recruitment firms and then
using a legal loophole, deputed to Air India and Air India Express.

Private firms comprising middlemen and brokers, with the respectable title
of “Aviation Consultants” were approached and many of these, such as
Rishworth Aviation, Parc Aviation and scores of others appeared out of the
wood work. Overnight, new consulting agencies sprang up, some in murky tax
havens like the Isle of Man and Channel Islands.

All suddenly began to offer “experienced” pilots from all parts of the
world. Many of these foreign pilots had and continue to have no clear track
record. Some claim to have thousands of hours of flying experience in
countries as diverse as Russia and Rwanda. Some of the airlines and
countries (such as Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia) that these pilots flew in
do not even exist anymore. No background checks are carried out by either
Air India or the Indian Government. Strangely the agency of middlemen, or
“consultant” supplying the pilots, is entrusted with this task.

Lucrative contracts were tailor-made to lure foreign pilots in droves.

Decades of rules meant to harass Indian pilots such as stringent medical
standards were waived off by the government for foreign pilots. Air India’s
pilots who are Indian nationals, have to undergo a DGCA medical test known
as a Class I medical examination and then are again subjected to an
elaborate company medical test known as a Pre Employment Medical Examination
(PEME).None of these apply to foreign nationals in India.

For example, an Indian pilot may not be allowed fly an Indian passenger
aircraft wearing a pacemaker but a foreigner most probably would because the
medical standards in his country allow it. There have been cases where
Indian pilots who are permanently medically grounded by Indian authorities
get foreign citizenship and foreign licences and return to India to fly
planes on “expat” terms. At least two such “foreign” pilots have served Air
India on such a contract.

Infact foreign pilots flying Indian registered aircraft are not even
required to have Indian flying licences! All they had to do is produce
“proof “of experience and a foreign licence and the DGCA issues a “temporary
authorisation”. Such “proof” of experience could be a fake certificate or a
fake rubber stamp but nobody carries out a background check.

A foreign pilot is not legally answerable to the Indian DGCA since he does
not have an Indian Licence. The DGCA can neither revoke nor suspend his
flying licence. Technically, an Indian Co Pilot involved in a serious air
accident may lose his flying licence and his job; whereas the pilot, if he
is a foreigner can take the next flight home and start life on a clean
slate!

To prevent the foreign pilots from coming under the ambit of direct taxes in
India, the pilots are “officially” based in foreign countries such as Dubai
and not given “local” terms of employment. Every month Air India pays the
foreign recruitment agencies the salaries of these pilots along with a
commission or “consultancy fees” to foreign bank accounts. This is turn
trickles back to the various politicians and officials who patronise the
system. Not surprisingly, a foreign pilot who recently approached Air India
for a job recently was asked to route his application through a recruitment
agency!

As a result ,hundreds of crores of income tax that would have normally gone
to the Indian Income Tax Department through TDS had these pilots been based
in India, is diverted to foreign bank accounts in foreign countries

“Liaison officers” and “advisors”, meant to “facilitate” business interests,
are regularly appointed by these foreign recruitment agencies to “liaise”
with the various ministries and departments. Two of Air India’s senior most
executives have retired in the past one year and have joined such firms as
“liaison” officers. Another, a retired CMD, continues to show great personal
interest in negotiating foreign pilots’ contracts on behalf of recruitment
agencies.

Foreign pilots are provided more leave, sometimes upto ten days in a month –
the justification being that they need to go home to be with their families.
Indian pilots flying for Air India Express are made to go on postings for
fifteen days at a stretch and given one day off at their home
base.Ironically these Indian pilots spend three to four days every
month with
their families and the foreigners (who could be from neighbouring Nepal or
Dubai) spend more than a week to ten days every month on holiday.

Foreigners also get paid a higher salary and are entitled to five star hotel
accommodations even when not flying. As a result, hundreds of hotel rooms
are booked by Air India at exorbitant rates – a percentage of which
presumably flows back to some officials.

This murky system in Air India of the past seven years has quietly gone
unnoticed. As long as flights took off on time and passengers reached their
destinations nobody really cared. Unions cried themselves hoarse- only to be
drowned in the din of the money power of powerful lobbies and an ill
informed media often hesitant to upset a mega industry that generates
lucrative advertisement revenue

The air crash at Mangalore need not have necessarily been caused by an
incompetent foreign pilot. This article is not meant to disrespect the
majority of foreign pilots in India. But the larger issue of rampant
corruption and greed must be addressed immediately. Little wonder that all
the officials in the dishonest food chain are now working overtime to cover
up the issue. Sadly the one hundred and fifty eight innocent people that
have been killed cannot speak for themselves anymore.

Therefore we, the rest of the nation, must stand up in one voice to demand a
CBI enquiry to unravel the mess.

We cannot afford to wait for another air disaster to prove the politicians,
bureaucrats and officials wrong.

Because the next time a shady foreign pilot from strange country with a
dubious qualification or medical history crashes a plane, you and I could
actually be on it.