Budding pilots from east and north east India will no longer have to travel to New Delhi or Bangalore to get a fitness certificate from the Indian Air Force (IAF) before they apply for a commercial pilot's license (CPL).
Faced with a flood of fitness certificate applications from those wanting to join the civil aviation sector, the IAF has opened a new medical centre at Jorhat in Assam to cater to them.
It is mandatory for all those who want to learn flying, including potential pilots from the Army, Navy and IAF, to get a fitness certificate from the IAF.
The new centre, called the Medical Examination Centre (MEC), east, is largely catering to applicants for CPLs from the eight north-eastern states, besides West Bengal. “Till now two institutes that were awarding certificates to all applicants were the Institute of Aviation Medicine, Bangalore, and the New Delhi-based Central Medical Establishment,” sources said.
After the boom, the two institutes were overloaded with applications.