Flying schools | Fixing pilot trainers

India wants its flying schools to train the pilots needed for a rapidly expanding aviation industry. But the new rankings by aviation regulator DGCA are already being questioned by unhappy flying academies

ISSUE DATE: Oct 12, 2026

Pilots in India have recently been in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, the latest example being the Air India pilot who tested positive for drugs following a severe mid-air crisis on a Phuket-Delhi flight in early August. India is also projected to need 30,000-40,000 new pilots over the next decade. And the government wants these pilots to ‘Train in India, Fly in India’ as well.

Which is why a significant overhaul of the pilot training ecosystem is under way. As part of that initiative, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has begun ranking all approved flying training organisations (FTOs) every six months. These rankings are based on five parameters—assisting students, safety, performance, operational capability and compliance—with four grades, A+ being the highest and C the lowest (see boxes, The Scorecard and How the Rankings Work). Two rounds have already been conducted, the first in October 2025 and another this April. The picture they present is not an encouraging one. Not one FTO—not even the government’s own—got the top grade in the inaugural round, prompting civil aviation minister K. Ram Mohan Naidu to say, “Now we know where we stand.”

Things improved marginally in the second round, with an FTO finally earning an A. Schools have also moved up and down the table, which the government says is evidence of rankings starting to make a difference. “My core objective in introducing an FTO ranking system is to make pilot training more transparent and flying a more attractive career option for the youth,” Naidu told india today. “Based on my interactions with aspiring cadets and their families, the idea was to institutionalise a system that brings clarity and conviction to their decision-making.”

The government also wants FTOs to be more competitive internationally and retain cadets who currently go abroad for training. “We always talk about demand India is creating in aviation,” says Naidu. “It is a very huge figure; we have around 1,700 aircraft on order, nearly 2X of the current fleet. These aircraft will need a skilled and safety-conscious workforce to fly them. We do not want to import the workforce to operate India’s aviation growth. We want to train that workforce right here in India.”

However, while industry has welcomed the initiative, having long flagged the need for India to be self-reliant in building its commercial pilot pipeline, a few FTOs are questioning the credibility of the whole exercise.

THE SKILL GAP

Despite the aviation boom over the past decade, there is a ‘skill gap’ between the pilots India produces and those airlines can employ. “A fresh Commercial Pilot Licence (CPL)-holder has been trained single-pilot, largely visual, on a light piston aircraft, in uncongested airspace,” says Khushbeg Jattana, general manager, Simaero India, an arm of the French company Simaero that operates a pilot training and simulation facility in Delhi-NCR. “That is exactly why India’s airlines default to recruiting pilots already type-rated (a pilot’s specialisation in a type of aircraft and the licence to fly that) and why that supply gets sourced globally. It is a rational commercial decision by an airline, and a structural failure of the pipeline.”

For Manoj Chacko, founder and CEO of regional carrier FLY91, building indigenous capability in pilot, aircraft engineer and technician training is just as important as building airports and airlines. “Equally important is who delivers that training,” he says. “For too long, parts of the ecosystem have been left to fragmented, mom-and-pop-type operators. To become a global aviation powerhouse, aviation training must be built on quality, safety and scale, and a regulatory framework that encourages modern learning.”

THE RANKING TEST

There is little dispute over the need for creating a benchmark for pilot training in India. However, the so-called report card, if industry opinion is to be believed, has caused a lot of heartburn even before take-off.

The Association of Flying Training Organisations (AFTO), a collective of the 41-odd DGCA-approved flying schools, has challenged the system and the data upon which the exercise is based, as well as the concept of a ‘regulator ranking organisations it regulates’. Industry officials say they were merely informed of the ranking exercise being introduced, with little opportunity for substantive consultation.

Of the 35 FTOs ranked in October 2025, none got an A+ or A, 13 were rated B, and 22—or nearly two-thirds—were rated C. Among the top three were Chimes Aviation Academy with air bases in Madhya Pradesh, SVKM’s NMIMS Academy of Aviation at Shirpur, Maharashtra, and Bihar Flying Club, Patna. The civil aviation ministry’s own FTO, Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Uran Akademi (IGRUA) in Amethi, stood 25th with a C category.

Those rankings stood revised in the second round. Avyanna Aviation Academy in Rajasthan’s Kishangarh became the first FTO ever to achieve a category A rating. Chimes, among the top three in Round 1, slipped to 10th position while retaining its B category in the previous round. Eleven schools upgraded their ratings from C to B, including the ministry’s FTO. However, seven existing FTOs slipped from B to C. Such movement is precisely what the government hopes to achieve: set a baseline, identify weaknesses and push schools to improve. According to official data, utilisation of training flying hours has risen from 32 to 50 per cent since the ranking was introduced.

THE DATA QUESTION

What the FTOs have an issue with is the integrity of data. “Wrong data can impact multiple parameters in the scoring process,” says D.P. Hemanth, CEO, Asia Pacific Flight Training Academy, which has training bases in Hyderabad and Kalaburagi. “If you are taking wrong data—like our cadet count was taken as 180 or something, whereas our actual count is around 70—the number gets so skewed that, as a result, the aircraft-to-student ratio is skewed, which is 10 marks. The student-to-instructor ratio is skewed, which is another 10 marks, and so on. So, if you lose 20-30 marks out of a possible 80, it’s a massive difference. Hence, it won’t work.”

AFTO president Harsh Singh points to an even stranger result. “My FTO has not been in operation for three and a half years,” says the head of Redbird Flight Training Academy. “But even I was ranked 24, ahead of operational FTOs.” When asked about it, a senior official says, “The ranking is applicable to all DGCA-approved FTOs that have completed 18 months as on February 28, 2026, from the date of approval.” Chimes failed to improve its ranking from B across the two rounds, despite running the cadet pilot programme for India’s largest airline, IndiGo. “We do not take this seriously anymore,” says its CEO, Y.N. Sharma. “Despite several representations from us and others, the DGCA has refused to rectify the system, so the ranking has lost its credibility.” AFTO’s Singh is equally perplexed about Chimes. “If Chimes is grade B, are we to believe IndiGo will give the job to a sub-par flying school?” he asks.

The DGCA sources FTO data from the Electronic Governance for Civil Aviation (eGCA), the single-window platform designed to automate and streamline regulatory processes. But operators say the rankings have sometimes been based on data at variance with the platform. “You have to look at your own data, that’s the least you can do,” Sharma says. “I produce 60 cadets every year, for which I get 2,000 applications, so people can tell a good academy from a bad one, no matter what the rankings say.”

The DGCA, however, denies there is any ambiguity about the data. They considered e-GCA information as on February 28, 2026, since the period of computation for the April 2026 rankings extended from March 1, 2025, to February 28, 2026. As for the allegation that there is no formal mechanism for FTOs to voice their objections and seek a review, a DGCA statement to india today says that the draft FTO ranking scorecard is shared with all FTOs, and their feedback taken into account while formulating the final ranking. The DGCA also says that it conducts sensitisation meetings with FTOs to invite comments and suggestions from time to time.

However, beyond the debate over data is an even more challenging question: should a regulator be generating a league table of organisations already compliant with its regulatory standards? “A regulator is ranking their own,” says Hemanth. “Nowhere in the world does this happen.” For the rankings to make a difference, the system itself will first have to pass a credibility test.

- Ends