​Did you check the pilot’s credential before you grabbed that aisle seat? ​

When you collect the boarding pass before flying off from any Indian city, your concerns are almost limited to punctuality and seat location of the flight. Having full confidence on the captain is always a good thing. But corruption having flown in each and every vein of India, it’s high time you raise question about the credential of the pilot flying you off.

Just the way, Bachelors and Post Graduation certificates are available without sitting for the exams, so are the flying certificates of pilots that confirms the flying hours.

To believe a news report by Bloomberg, one Anupam Verma has managed to obtain a certificate of 360 hours by sitting in the co pilot’s seat for just 35 minutes.

As per the news report, the son of a poor farmer, Verma was given a 2.8 million-rupee ($44,000) subsidy by the Indian government to learn to fly a commercial jet. "What if I was flying and had an emergency? I wouldn't even know how or where to land," Verma, 25, said in an interview. "We'd kill not only the passengers, but we might crash in a village and kill even more people."

Concern about the quality of India's pilots has been building over the past decade as a proliferation of budget airlines created demand for hundreds of new pilots. In 2011, the government reviewed the licences of all 4,000-plus airline pilots in the country, as police investigated at least 18 people suspected of using forged documents to win promotions or certification. The findings of the review were not made public.
"The fudging of log books is rampant both in airlines and in flying clubs," said Mohan Ranganathan, a former commercial pilot and aviation safety consultant based in Chennai. He said the 2011 audit found violations in most flying clubs in the country. "Hours were logged with aircraft not even in airworthy condition. One aircraft had no engines but several hundred hours were logged." Asked about the continued use of fake certificates, India's Director General of Civil Aviation, M Sathiyavathy, said on April 24 the directorate would be conducting a new audit that would require the "recertification of all the flying schools."

After the German Wings devastation in last March and Malayasian Airlines mishap last year, it’s high time, the government take some drastic measures to ascertain the lives of the passengers.

(Image: Wikimedia)