3 - Ministry of Civil Aviation

CHAPTER - 2TRAININGAvailability of well-trained technical manpower such as engineers and pilots is a criticalpre-requisite for a vibrant aviation sector. During the course of its deliberations, the Committeewas given to understand that several institutes engaged in imparting training to would-beengineers and pilots are facing a wide array Of difficulties. This Chapter suggests measures foralleviating the hardships of public and private institutes engaged in aviation-related training.2.1 EngineersTo ensure high standards of training, only institutes approved by the DGCA are allowedto impart training for aircraft maintenance engineers. After a candidate passes three basicpapers, DGCA grants the Basic Aircraft Maintenance Engineers License (BAMEL). Thereafter,the candidate gets training on , specific aircraft. On gaining the necessary experience, thecandidate obtains the license for a specific type of aircraft.During the course of deliberations of this Committee, representatives of the traininginstitutes pointed to a number of difficulties faced by them, which need to be looked into byDGCA and the Ministry of Civil Aviation. Some of the issues raised by the represen,...cives arediscussed below.For a long time, the main problem of the training institutes has been the non-availabilityof On-the-Job-Training (OJT) facilities for their students. To overcome this problem, DGCAhad issued a circular in August 1993 to the major operators at the time, viz. Indian Airlines, AirIndia and Pawan Hans to give . OJT to specified number of trainees every six months in themaintenance of aircraft/helicopters operated by them. All the operators have not reportedlyheeded the instruction even though it appears to be in their long-term interest. Therepresentatives of the institutes were unanimous in the view that the Ministry/ DGCA shouldmake it mandatory for the approved maintenance organisations and the scheduled operators toallow students to undergo OJT in their organisations. This suggestion makes sense. Therm.:11)er of trainees to be taken by an operator could be fixed in proportion to the strength ofthe'' fleet operated by them, say one trainee per aircraft/helicopter. (Merit in the DGCAexamination could be the criteria for selection.) This will go a long way not only in resolvingthe OJT problem_ , but will also help in improving the quality of Aircraft Maintenance Engineer(AME) training.The industry representatives also pointed out that some of the scheduled airlines havenow started providing ab initio AME training to their graduate engineers for converting themto licensed maintenance engineers. The graduate engineers were earlier recruited for theQuality Control divisions, and were not required to have,AME license. However, they are nowbeing converted as licensed engineers, for which the operators themselves are giving the basictraining even for acquiring BAMEL. This is a time consuming and very expensive process asBAMEL holders are available in the market at no cost to the airlines. In their view, the airlines