Uncertainty over his job prospects and a mounting debt have often led to panic attacks and sleepless nights for a 25-year-old trainee pilot at Go First, who paid the airline ₹80 lakh for the second leg of his training that starts after joining an airline. With the airline now shut for six months and his training still incomplete, he has few takers in the job market.
Abhishek Chaturvedi (name changed) is among 34 trainee pilots who paid Go First between ₹50 lakh and ₹80 lakh for a six-month training programme, before being “line released” to fly the company’s aircraft. Finding another job will now require them to restart this training, paying a similar fee to their new employer. Industry veterans say that “exorbitant” training costs are an emerging trend that has gone unregulated, as a result of which this may be the first time in Indian aviation that an airline’s collapse has so egregiously affected pilots.
The trainees have written to the Minister for Civil Aviation Jyotiraditya Scindia, seeking his intervention to secure their future.
