IN CONVERSATION Indian aviation is growing with leaps and bounds with increasing demand of trained professionals. This has also created interest for global training organizations to either venture or enhance their presence in the country. With having presence in over 10 countries, ALVES Alexandre, Global Chief Operating & Commercial Officer, Airways Aviation Academy beliefs that the growth rate of India is so fast that there will be constraints finding all the qualified professionals. In an exclusive interview with Vishal Kashyap, Managing Editor, Aviation World, he shares his plans for India. Excerpts… Brief us about the global presence of Airways Aviation and what all course does it provides? Airways Aviation currently operates directly in 10 countries: Australia, India, Lebanon, Turkey, UAE, Germany, France, Montenegro, Italy and Senegal. Our Lebanese operation is expanding now to Cyprus and we are about to enter Portugal, Cabo Verde and Morocco with new operations. We are also expanding into Hainan in China with a local partner. We have different levels of schools if we can call it like that. The entry level is a Foundation School, which is what we have opened in Hyderabad last year. There we provide a proper airline focused assessment, focusing not only on standard skills such as Math’s, Physics and English but also pilot skills using ADAPT from Symbiotic which gives us a psychological and psychometric evaluation of the candidate. After that we provide our own Foundation Course which is what we can call a non-certified PPL theory course, and after that we are in a very good condition to tell the candidates if he can or not invest their time and money in pursuing their career as pilots. Once they pass successfully, we guide them to our next level of schools where we provide commercial pilot training. In addition, in our fully fledged academies we provide also cabin crew, maintenance technician and ground services courses. Examples of our main academies that cover the full scope are Australia and France. How is the response to the Hyderabad training Center in India and when it started? We started slowly in August 2023, and we’ve been running Foundation Courses almost every month. So far, we graduated successfully 36 students of which 8 continued to take their CPL training in Australia. This year we plan to expand our courses by launching DGCA Theory not only in Hyderabad but in several other Indian cities. We are also looking into some flight schools already operating in India, for a possible acquisition. How do you see the Indian market and what projections you have to cater to the demands? Personally, as you know, I’ve been looking into the Indian market since 2017. It was obvious for me that the market was under performing and was not showing its true potential. Now, with the changes the government has done, giving incentives for regional flights, opening new airports, promoting new operators to join the market, the growth of Indian middle class and the latest merger of Air India and TATA Group airlines (Vistara and Air Asia India) finally we are seeing the true potential. The only problem now is that the growth rate being pushed is so fast that there will be constraints finding all the qualified professionals, such as pilots or maintenance technicians, to follow this growth. And it’s there that we can help, using our experience of over 45 years in training thousands and thousands of aviation professionals in a multitude of countries. Tell us about the fleet you have and approx training cost and timeline as per Indian Civil Aviation Requirements? We operate currently around 70 aircraft throughout our flight schools but we plan to expand the fleet significantly. Most of our aircraft are Diamond Aircraft but we still operate Cessna, Piper and Tecnam, depending on the level of school we are talking. Cost of the pilot course varies from country to country, depending on the location, type of training, type of qualification (ICAO, CASA, EASA, etc.). It can go from USD65.000 to USD105.000. But as I mentioned, we plan to expand in India and start training locally and for that reason we are looking into possible acquisitions. This will address the desire of the government to have more aviation training in the country and can also help with the costs for everyone looking into getting their pilot course. Do you have any tie-ups with any training academy or airlines in India for training as well as recruitment purpose? We have the possibility of doing very interesting training contracts with some of the leading airlines and that is also why we want to invest more in the country and grow by having a flight training operation there. At this stage we cannot say more but I’m sure we will have news in the next few months. Any additional information if you would like to share? Airways Aviation is more a B2B focused aviation training organization than B2C. Through the years our organization has trained thousands of military and civilian pilots, cabin crew, maintenance technicians and other professionals for airlines, governments and official organizations in a variety of countries of Oceania, Asia, Middle East, Africa and Europe. Having said this, of course our B2C customers are very welcome and it’s part of our strategy to diversify not only the geographic source of our customers but also the type of customers. There is a saying that we shouldn’t put all the eggs in the same basket. Our presence in a multitude of countries of different regions of the globe and the fact that we operate with self-sponsored students up to leading airlines and air forces, enable us to be financially more stable than most of our competitors. We are also very fast in deciding our investments and as you may have seen, we are on fast but steady growth path, this can bring some assurance to all our customers that we are their go to aviation training organization.
