Amravati’s Belora Airport is set to emerge as a pilot-training hub after receiving approval from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Friday for the Air India Flying Training Academy.
Deepak Kapoor, vice-chairman and managing director of the Maharashtra Airport Development Company (MADC), said the academy was expected to start operations as early as the first week of November.
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“This is huge news for Amravati. The DGCA has finally issued the Certificate of Approval to the Air India Flying Training Academy at MADC’s Amravati Airport. It is a game changer for our great city. The academy will open up new opportunities for the region while putting Amravati on the country’s aviation map,” Kapoor said.
The academy, developed jointly by MADC and Air India, is spread across 10 acres at Belora Airport. Its infrastructure includes digitally enabled classrooms, student accommodation, briefing rooms, a dining facility, a maintenance hangar and a digital operations centre.
The campus was around 95% complete when HT reported on October 26 that Belora’s pilot academy neared completion, with all 34 training aircraft relocated from Nagpur to Amravati. Pankul Mathur, Air India’s director of flight operations, had then said that “certain aspects were still being finalised.”
{{/usCountry}}The campus was around 95% complete when HT reported on October 26 that Belora’s pilot academy neared completion, with all 34 training aircraft relocated from Nagpur to Amravati. Pankul Mathur, Air India’s director of flight operations, had then said that “certain aspects were still being finalised.”
{{/usCountry}}The training fleet comprises 31 Piper Archer single-engine aircraft and three Diamond DA42 NG twin-engine aircraft. The aircraft are equipped with Garmin G1000 NXi glass cockpits and automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) technology. The academy will also have three fixed-base flight simulators to support pilot training.
The facility is expected to train around 180 commercial pilots annually. The commercial pilot licence (CPL) programme will run for approximately 18 months and involve 200 hours of flying — 185 hours on single-engine aircraft and 15 hours on twin-engine aircraft. The planned student-instructor ratio is six to one.
The academy is also expected to offer foreign licence conversion and radio-telephony training, and generate employment by creating demand for accommodation, transport and other support services in the region. Belora’s flying conditions are expected to support the programme, with the location recording more than 300 favourable flying days annually.
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In a statement on Friday, Air India said that the DGCA approval for the academy marks a significant milestone in India’s pilot training capacity and aviation ecosystem, calling it the first such flying training facility established by an Indian airline in the country.
Air India is also developing a 6-lakh sq ft training academy in Gurugram, which it describes as South Asia’s largest aviation training institution.