Indonesia short of domestic pilots

Due to limited training facilities and expensive pilot training, Indonesia has so far failed to overcome the severe shortage in domestic pilots to accommodate the rapid fleet expansion of local airlines in recent years, the Jakarta Post quoted an official as saying on Saturday. The Transportation Ministry's head of human resources development agency, Capt. Bobby Mamahit, urged airline operators to temporarily hire foreign pilots or halt their fleet expansions pending the availability of more local pilots. "The airlines need to be realistic. It's impossible for us to double the number of fresh-graduate pilots overnight," said Mamahit. According to the ministry, the country needs up to 600 new pilots a year, more than three times the total number of pilots the country can produce from the state-run Curug Aviation School in Tangerang city of Banten province, and seven other smaller private aviation schools, some of which are affiliated with local airlines. As of mid-2011, there were around 7,000 pilots working for domestic airlines, 300 of whom were foreign nationals. With the rapid increase in air passenger numbers over the past decade, Indonesia is currently home to around 50 airline operators.