Government Flying Training School

The GFTS in Jakkur airfield is quite old. However, it has been active for only a fraction of its age. It is the Government FTS.

The school is not short of resources. It has a reasonably large fleet, its own airfield (Jakkur airfield and the school are owned by the state government), a hangar and 33 staff excluding the instructors to take care of the airplanes.

I had a chance to walk around the hangar and talk to a maintenance technician called Reddy.

The GFTS hangar had 7 airplanes 5 of which were airworthy. The inventory as I could see it
1 Cessna 172
2 Cessna 152 Aerobats (one of them made by Reims)
2 HAL Pushpaks
1 Aeronca Chief
1 NAL Hansa

One of the Pushpaks (the Pushpak is based on the Chief) and the Aeronca Chief were "condemned" according to Reddy, presumably for parts for the airworthy Pushpak (VT-DYF). The condemned Pushpak (VT-EHZ) was apparently the prototype built by HAL which they donated to the school.


This airworthy Pushpak was powered by a Rolls Royce engine!

I had read a lot about the NAL Hansa and this was the first time I saw one in person.
It looks strange and the wing looks downright weird. It had tiny vertical stabilizers sticking up from the middle of the surface. The cowling is all metal (heavy at that) and the wings are composite. The engine is apparently a Rotax though there are other examples flying with Lycomings and Continentals. The cockpit looked roomy when I peeked under the cover. Reddy recommended that I not fly in this plane if I had the opportunity. This plane made its debut flight almost a decade ago and has yet to see production. NAL, has tried to win customers by giving them away to flying clubs across the country. No one wants to buy them.

All aircraft were well maintained from what I could see except for the pigeon droppings. I asked about ADs and service bulletins and Reddy said every single one of them have been complied with.

So who flies these airplanes? Nobody. The school does not have a single instructor, and without an instructor, they can't even rent them out. The last instructor resigned and left more than a year ago (probably to an airline - there is a huge shortage of pilots in India), and the government has been looking for a new one ever since with very generous pay (Reddy said they were offering Rs.150K per month). That's equivalent to a $150K per annum salary here in the US (not in direct conversion but in the kind of lifestyle it can support). No one is biting because the airlines pay extra generously.

So what do the 33 maintenance staff do? They come in every day, check oil and fluids, run up the engines once in a while, and generally shoot the breeze. All of them have also become so familiar with the airplanes that Reddy claimed he could tell the Rolls Royce from the Lycoming from the Continental, and which magneto was on which (he listed out a few makes of which I could recognize only Bendix) and which one was weak all only by sound. If something was misfiring, he could tell which cylinder, and which plug from a few seconds of listening. I'm not surprised. What else do they have to do?

It is really a sad state of affairs. CFIs here in the US make minimum pay partly because there are so many of them. I am surprised no US based school has opened Indian operations in a big way. Students from India come here to learn flying. Reddy himself had sent his son to New Zealand to get his CFI (for microlights) ticket and he was going to open a school himself on his own private field! He is going to target mainly the leisure flyers. But there is still a huge demand among people who want to fly for a living.

If I had money and time to get my CFII quickly, I would do it and go apply for that job at the GFTS!