Air India to Expand Significantly in the Future

Things seem to be going extremely well for the Indian airline: not long ago, Air India announced that they would be expanding their number of staff… by a lot.
Good news for everyone who is coming to India for the Rickshaw Challenge or the India’s Cup: soon, Air India will provide tourists with more flight options to choose from and a higher quality service thanks to all the freshly hired cabin crew.

They are planning on hiring approximately 700 pilots and a whopping 1,500 cabin crew. The question naturally arises: why? Well, it is suspected that the fleet of the airline is going to increase soon, too; the new crew members are needed to keep up with the expansion.

“We are planning to have 700 more pilots in the next two to three years keeping in view the fleet expansion. From last August till now, we have already recruited 250 pilots. So about 500 more pilots we are going to recruit. Advertisement for 400 pilots has already been floated,” said General Manager of Operations, Mr. Sivaramakirshnan to ScoopWhoop.
It is estimated that 150 pilots will complete their training by the end of this year. The target number for cabin crew is in the ballpark of 3,000 – with an existing number of 1,500 cabin crew presently employed by Air India, another 1,500 is needed to reach the goal. Preferably, in the next two to three years.

Mr. Sivaramakirshnan added that the fleet will also get bigger; they plan on adding at least one hundred new aircrafts in the next four years. Currently, Air India’s fleet is made up of 77 airplanes.
To be able to successfully train the large number of new pilots, the company will acquire some more training simulators (they have a total of seven, three in Hyderabad and four in Mumbai.)
In any case, we cannot wait for even more flights to choose from and have everything taken care of by the increased number of cabin crew while we relax – because the moment we land, it’s going to be all hands on deck on a bumpy ride.