A company by the name of FlightSafety International, owned by Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett, is the leading aviation training company in the world. They recently have established business operations in India. They did this through a licensing agreement and consultancy with Aviators India, a Bangalore-based business.
The company, which is based out of New York and 60 years old, provides around 1 million hours of flight training in a business year to technicians, pilots, cabin attendants and other professionals in the field of aviation. It also supplies visual systems, flight simulators and displays to military organizations, governments and commercial operations all around the globe. FlightSafety’s India play will begin over the next four months. They will start out in the area of cabin attendant training for corporate flight operators as well as commercial operators.
“Put together (both commercial and corporate operators) there would be over 10,000 flight attendants in India. And given the number of aircraft orders airlines have placed, this vertical could well see a growth of 100% over the next 5 to 7 years,” we learned from Arun Sharma, MD, Aviators India.
The business Aviators India has been around for nearly 2 decades, providing sales of corporate jets and aircraft charter services to individuals in India with a high net worth. They conduct cabin crew training in-house in India typically, and there are very few third-party training companies providing grooming to cabin crews. There are specifically two different types of markets for training in India, and they are the recurrence market and the initial market. FlightSafety intends to address the needs of both in this country.
“The initial market is when somebody has no experience and goes through a full training module, while the recurrence market addresses people who need refresher courses every six months or a year depending on an operator’s policy,” Sharma said. He also adds that the apex aviation regulator of the country, known as the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, acknowledges this training provided by FlightSafety.
“FlightSafety is also looking at making India a hub, providing end to end training services, including training on simulators, to markets such as West Asia and Southeast Asia,” we learned from Daniel M Yuen, MD, APAC region, FlightSafety.
“Simulators require a specific number of aircraft type and once the threshold is met we will work together with the manufacturers and make a joint decision on where to have the simulators,” we also learned from Yuen.