In India, Some Pilots Can Barely Fly

摘要

Anupam Verma has a certificate that says he's flown an aircraft for 360 hours. He got it, he admits, after sitting in the co-pilot's seat for just 35 minutes. He shudders to think of what would have happened if he'd gotten a job flying a commercial airliner on the strength of that piece of paper. "What if I was flying and had an emergency? I wouldn't even know how or where to land," Verma, 25, says. "We'd kill not only the passengers, but we might crash in a village and kill even more people." Verma's certification came from an aviation school called Yash Air in the city of Indore. The school gave its students almost no training, collected fees of 2.8 million rupees ($44,000) per student, spent as little as possible on aircraft and fuel, and handed out certificates inflating flying hours, according to court documents and interviews with pilots, regulators, and industry analysts.