After Sept 11, 2001 when USA got struck by terrorist attack, almost all the industries has been affected. But Aviation Industry is one of the hardest hit, as the major airlines likes of Swiss Air and American airlines. But despite of all these happenings Indian Aviation industry though minute could withstand this pressure and had grown leaps and bounds. This is due to the growth of Indian economy and tourism industry in particular in the last few years.

In the last two years many a new airlines have come to the fore in a huge way and many huge industries have declared their wishes to enter into this industry. Another major leap was the open sky policy of Government of India permitting the existing private airlines in India to fly to foreign destinations.

It does require a special mention that with such expansions planned by major aviation companies and new companies formed there is a vast manpower requirement. Qualified manpower is in huge abundance in India but they need a proper direction to capitalise on this surge in industry. When the human resources needed by these companies were less in number, it was easy to tap from a huge HR bank but when the demand for such HR increased they are finding it extremely difficult to maintain the quality of HR selected for these jobs especially when more and more foreign airlines are flying into India offering high salary packages forcing the better of HR to go with these companies.

It is important to mention here that Indian aviation industry grew by 20% second only to BPO industry in services sector and then comes the concept of no frills airline the market for which is growing vastly. Many no frills airline have already announced their plans to start services to India a few of them are Nok Air, Air Asia-Thailand, Air Arabia etc.

The boom in the aviation sector in India can be gauged by the fact that in one year, the number of people seeking pilot licenses and airhostess training has multiplied three times. In April 2005, it was 300. In April 2006, the number rose to 1045. The civil aviation industry is booming. Indian airlines placed orders for over 400 aircraft worth a whopping $30 billion for its operational requirements. That shows a requirement of 5600 pilots, 19000 airhostess or cabin crew, 24000 technicians, 36000 ground handling crew and various other related vacancies.

And these aviation industry vacancies are all fresh vacancies without including vacancies that may come up in the existing aircrafts.

Also the pay packages offered by the various Indian airlines have also seen an upward trend due to very few number of trained pilots and cabin crew availability. Hence there is an opportunity for you.

Indian aviation is witnessing a mushrooming of new airlines especially low cost carriers. Besides the existing Air Deccan, newly launched Spicejet and value airline Kingfisher Airlines, there are Indus Airways, Air One, East West Airlines, Go Airways, Magic Air and Crystal Air who are getting ready to fly Indian sky soon. India is to see the launch of at least 14 such airlines. Low cost start-up carrier IndiGo had stunned the aviation industry by placing orders for 100 aircraft at a list price of over $6 billion last year.

It is anyone’s guess as to Human Resource Requirements, especially pilots, airhostesses, flight attendants and other cabin crew, that are going to come up in the Aviation Sector. Demand is much above the number of people acquiring training for the same. Jet Airways along with Sahara India has about 47 percent share of the domestic aviation market, followed by Indian Airlines (28 per cent), Air Deccan (11 per cent), Kingfisher (6 per cent) and SpiceJet (5 per cent) as on October2006.

Jet Airways tops the list of domestic and national carrier operators with 8,168 flights operating till June 2005. Indian Airlines ranks second with 7,562 flights, followed by Sahara (3,225 flights), Air Deccan (2,889 flights), Spice Jet (483 flights) and Kingfisher Airlines (267 flights).

The sudden boom in Indian aviation has caught even the normally market savvy global aerospace manufacturers unawares. Recently, both Boeing and Airbus said they had underestimated Indian growth. This means global players are also coming into the scene.

It wasn't surprising since statistics compiled by Airbus Industrie showed that Indian carriers accounted for 327 out of the 2,140 firm orders for new aircraft that were placed with it and rival Boeing in 2005. This does not take into account the orders placed for smaller airplanes with other manufacturers like ATR and Dassault - which, too, are flooded with offers from private Indian carriers.

The Brazilian aircraft manufacturer, Embraer, is bullish on the prospects in the Indian market. Their forecast is that between 2006 and 2010, the demand for 30-120-seater planes in India would be around 165, which is about 40 per cent of the demand of the Asia-Pacific region. The value of these aircraft would be around $4 billion.

They feel that a majority of the aircraft required will be in the 61-120-seat capacity segment. 70 per cent of these would be required for market growth while there would be a small demand for replacement.