Finally some good news to a growing number of unemployed pilots. Malindo Air and Lion Air will hire more than 600 pilots from Malaysia for its operations over the next few months to years while its rivals are only hiring between 50 and 100 a year.
That's not all. According to PT Lion Grup president director Rusdi Kirana, the group has the capacity to absorb many more pilots and it can even hire up to 1,000 over the next five years.
“With all the aircraft orders that we have made, we certainly need pilots. It is not empty promises, it is real. We need pilots but it also depends on the pilots. They must have good skills, knowledge and the right attitude (before we can hire them),” he says in an interview with StarBizWeek.
He adds that “we are growing and we have placed an order for 381 new aircraft and that means we need pilots. And we are also thinking of ordering more aircraft.”
The airline group was in the limelight in February when it firmed an order to buy 230 aircraft worth US$22bil from Boeing and that purchase was said to be the single largest contract in commercial aviation history. It is because of that order, many within the aviation industry began looking at Lion Air seriously.
The PT Lion Grup owns Lion Air, Wings Air and Batik Air (to be launched in the second half of 2013) and has a 49% stake in Malaysia's Malindo Air.
“In a year, we will take delivery of 36 to 40 aircraft and for each aircraft we need five sets of pilots or 10 people. So we need to hire about 200 pilots each year and over five years we will need 1,000 pilots.
“On top of that, there will also be pilots who fall sick or go on leave, so we need 20% more. So in total, we can take up to 1,200 pilots over the five years, but it all depends on skills, knowledge and attitude,” Rusdi says.
There are over 1,000 unemployed pilots in the country who can't seem to pin down jobs because there is a limited number of vacancies and they cannot market themselves globally because they have too few flying hours.
But the emergence of Malindo Air has presented an opportunity for the trained pilots, some of whom have taken study loans from banks and are doing odd-jobs to service their debt and to make ends meet.
When news broke that Malindo Air was set up, the airline was flooded with enquires. In fact, when it conducted a walk-in interview early this month, throngs of people showed up for various jobs in the new airline. Among them were over 600 unemployed pilots who had travelled across the country for the interview.
“The airline is our fresh hope of fulfilling a career,” says an unemployed pilot who stood in line for three days for an interview.
Whether or not he gets the job will depend on him passing a written test, a psychometric test and a simulator test before he can ink a contract to fly for either Malindo Air, Lion Air or any other airline within the group.
However, they still need to attend aircraft type training which will initially be conducted in Jakarta and they will have to take loans which the group will help to provide. The training is essential to clock in the prerequisite flying hours with Lion Air before they can pilot for Malindo, which is expected to take off in mid-March next year.
To show its seriousness, the group will transport one simulator to Kuala Lumpur so training can eventually be done here.
Rusdi's strategy is a quick way of meeting the airline's needs, where instead of employing high school leavers to undertake training, he is hiring those who are already skilled and trained to undertake aircraft type and line training. That will help to save cost.
He acknowledges that “yes, it is a clever strategy but we are thinking of the long term. We could possibly take experienced pilots but then we would not be spending time to train the young pilots.”
SOURCE
This is definitely great news to the fresh pilot grads in Malaysia and are still looking for their big break in an airline job. Lion Air means serious business with their unbelievably huge order of the new B737 back in February this year. Each plane will need minimally 10 pilots to operate and with the hundreds of planes coming in, it can only mean higher demand for pilots.
For those waiting for their opportunity, do not blow this chance.
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