Pilots’ guild to HC: IA pilots not experienced to fly Boeing 787

The Indian Pilots’ Guild (IPG) on Wednesday informed the Bombay high court that pilots of the erstwhile Indian Airlines (IA) did not have the required experience to fly the wide-bodied Boeing 787 aircrafts.

The Indian Pilots’ Guild (IPG) on Wednesday informed the Bombay high court that pilots of the erstwhile Indian Airlines (IA) did not have the required experience to fly the wide-bodied Boeing 787 aircrafts.

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The IPG also claimed that the cost of training IA pilots would be four times that of training pilots from erstwhile Air India (AI).

Appearing for the IPG, advocate Jamshed Mistry and senior counsel Darius Shroff informed the court that IA pilots have experience only in flying narrow-bodied aircrafts, and hence, the expenditure and time needed for training them would be much higher. AI pilots, on the other hand, have experience in flying Boeing 777, which gives them a better ground to understand its operation.

This comes in the wake of the tussle between Indian Pilots Guild (with erstwhile Air India pilots) and the Indian Commercial Pilots Association (erstwhile Indian Airlines pilots) over the proposed 1:1 policy adopted by the national carrier to fill its flight crew requirements. The 1:1 policy schedule requires assigning flight duty on a Boeing 787 aircraft to one pilot each from AI, and IA.