Note to self: Do Not Fly on any Indian Airlines.

GypsyPilot said:
I really don't know what the deal is with the culture in India and aviation. I instructed at a very busy airport in FL in 2007-08, and we had a school next to us that specialized in teaching Indian students.

It was at times frightening. They lost many aircraft, several of their people were killed in numerous incidents, I was almost killed in a near mid-air from one of their instruction flights, etc. It was chaotic, and really nothing surprises me. How there aren't more incidents in their aviation industry is baffling.
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Lantana?
 
Well I'm an Indian and I don't think you should blame it on our culture but its true that there's a lot of corruption in every type of department here. Yes there are rich dad's spoilt sons that have the money to get cpl licenses and do this as if it was fun, but I believe that some of us who are hardworking and so the whole community should not be blamed and it would be a request if everyone would analyze any person of any nationality by his skills and intellect and not undermine them on the basis of their nationality. Most are trying their best to do their part correctly.
 
No bueno

Air Traffic Controllers Honored for Skill in the Tower
MAY 16, 200512:00 AM ET
On a clear day last July, Scott Dittamo was training at the Newark Tower when he spotted an Air India flight with 409 passengers on board making its final approach. But something didn't look right. The Boeing 747's landing gear was still up as the plane was a half-mile from landing.

"Air India 145 heavy, check gear down, gear appears up," Dittamo radioed the plane. Colleagues quickly congratulated him on the "great catch."

Michele Norris talks to Dittamo and Ken Hopf, who are among the 12 controllers being honored today for helping prevent tragedies in the nation's skies.
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4654062
 
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Navi said:
Well I'm an Indian and I don't think you should blame it on our culture but its true that there's a lot of corruption in every type of department here. Yes there are rich dad's spoilt sons that have the money to get cpl licenses and do this as if it was fun, but I believe that some of us who are hardworking and so the whole community should not be blamed and it would be a request if everyone would analyze any person of any nationality by his skills and intellect and not undermine them on the basis of their nationality. Most are trying their best to do their part correctly.
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I get what you're trying to say. However, when over 600 hundred students are suspended for cheating on their exams that says some thing. Most of the people helping them cheat (by scaling walls of the schools) were their parents. I think it's a little more widespread than you're letting on.

 
CFI A&P said:
That first link in the OP seems almost like an onion article.

However there are numerous accounts of Indian pilots falsifying flight times. It is wide spread.
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Perhaps you missed the memo and the Pew Study... amongst the most reliable and informative news sources these days are the Onion and the Daily Show.
 
GypsyPilot said:
I really don't know what the deal is with the culture in India and aviation.
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Well, at least India has a Western-influenced, relatively free press. China? All that same shizzle*, but it'll never be made public.



*Note to auto-moderator programmer... really? What a pain. No, I didn't use the word you were looking for. But you auto-eliminated it anyway. So I had to change it to shizzle... which MEANS the SAME THING but IS a LAME EUPHEMISM... oh, wait, that's a redundant tautology... Now, that would be worth auto-eliminating.
 
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The Indian students I had turned into great pilots, but I didn't give them a free pass and try to shove them through the course work either. I was always honest with them about where they were in training.

With that being said, their exams are ridiculous from what I understand. They are trying to do things like the JAA does it with a series of test, but it just a bunch of ATP type test with a bunch of old and out date stuff in it.

I recall those guys having to take a weekend course to get their radio telephone license, which included the reverse engineering of a short wave radio!
 
Navi said:
Well I'm an Indian and I don't think you should blame it on our culture but its true that there's a lot of corruption in every type of department here. Yes there are rich dad's spoilt sons that have the money to get cpl licenses and do this as if it was fun, but I believe that some of us who are hardworking and so the whole community should not be blamed and it would be a request if everyone would analyze any person of any nationality by his skills and intellect and not undermine them on the basis of their nationality. Most are trying their best to do their part correctly.
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A culture is not a nationality is not a race is not an individual.

I can sure as heck judge a culture. I cannot, in good conscience, judge a nationality, even if it's largely a monoculture. I certainly cannot judge a race, and I can only judge an individual based on the behavior of that individual.

But when a culture is incompatible with an activity, like aviation, it is up to the individual to shed their culture and embrace the new one, or be damned for it. Aviation demands integrity and honesty and profound individual responsibility before all other values; respect, family, class, caste, wealth and status can have no greater hold.

-Fox
 
There are a few airlines I wont fly on, from a bunch of different cultures. Aerocontinente nearly killed me (Peruvian), Saeta/TAME (Ecuadorian) use to let their fighter pilots practice on their 727s, heck of a ride. EgyptAir (fun flight from Paris to Cairo in 89 during a sandstorm), Ethiopian (overbooked the flight so packed their jumpseats with paying Ethiopians, and girlfriend sat next to a crazy woman who performed spells the entire trip), Air India, and I try to avoid an unnamed regional (they are NEVER on time).

Some cultures may make training more challenging, but I am convinced that through hard work, dedication, and high standards, you can have the same highly skilled pilots regardless of culture.
 
I remember TAME, great fun. Culture needs to be broken down and built back up again. I'm a big fan of the military in this regard.
 
Derg said:
If you guys think it's just India that has those issues.

Wait.

Hold my beer.

I'm about to start uproariously laughing and I don't want to spill it.
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Nope. Just guzzle it down really fast, then "start uproariously laughing" and watch it come out your nose!

So I've heard.
 
It's not even so much their flight training here in the states. At least in the states they have to have some sort of standards to pass a CMEL. A big problem is when they go to the Philippines, which is notorious for selling certs.

Add that to the fact when they get in an airline environment they are not aloud to touch the controls below 10K.
 
Roger Roger said:
Their culture.
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Really? I guess you are an expert on India, ever been there?

I think a lot of people here, posting comments really have no clue, while it is true that a big majority of Indian pilots are below western standards, you guys forget the big picture. Becoming a pilot in India is not easy, and being a pilot is a huge status, a lot of spoiled and rich kids end up in this field, some of them have never moved a finger in their lives to do anything, so they are not used to make any special effort to get there, all they want is the uniform. There are set up marriages to gain a position within an airline, bribes to pass interviews and so on....unfortunately this is the reality of most Indian pilots, but it does not represent at all the Indian work culture, in other fields where you are required to work your way up you have amazing skilled professionals, that export their abilities world wide.

On average Indian immigrants living in the US make a better living then the average American.

I met many good Indian pilots that struggled many years to become a pilot, they worked the ramp at Australian airports while attending flight school with the small funds sent by their parents working in the middle east.
 
Oh, Lord!
http://www.bizjournals.com/wichita/blog/2015/06/how-an-innovation-minded-boeing-engineer-saved.html

So it appears an Indian engineer has just been awarded high honors at Boeing for his design prowess. I was going to offer this up as some kind of... I don't know, balancing, for the somewhat culturally insensitive tack this thread has taken. But then I read the article. So the dude has "fixed" an airframe problem with a "software solution". "Boeing, let me introduce you to Airbus... Airbus, Boeing."
 
swisspilot said:
Really? I guess you are an expert on India, ever been there?

I think a lot of people here, posting comments really have no clue, while it is true that a big majority of Indian pilots are below western standards, you guys forget the big picture. Becoming a pilot in India is not easy, and being a pilot is a huge status, a lot of spoiled and rich kids end up in this field, some of them have never moved a finger in their lives to do anything, so they are not used to make any special effort to get there, all they want is the uniform. There are set up marriages to gain a position within an airline, bribes to pass interviews and so on....unfortunately this is the reality of most Indian pilots, but it does not represent at all the Indian work culture, in other fields where you are required to work your way up you have amazing skilled professionals, that export their abilities world wide.

On average Indian immigrants living in the US make a better living then the average American.

I met many good Indian pilots that struggled many years to become a pilot, they worked the ramp at Australian airports while attending flight school with the small funds sent by their parents working in the middle east.
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Look, that's all well and good but it sort of comes across as excuses for what seems from all available evidence (much of it firsthand from people who have flown over there) to be a completely rotten safety culture. As in, not really even trying in a lot of cases.
 
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