600 unemployed pilots to finally secure jobs at Malindo and Lion

Afterschool

November 19, 2012

Win-win strategy for airline company to meet its needs quickly while offering more jobs to skilled and trained young pilots
Skills, knowledge and attitude were cited as important factors to getting hired

Unemployed pilots may have something to smile about. Over the next few months, over 600 pilots from Malaysia will secure jobs at Malindo Air and Lion Air. This is considered the highest compared to other airline companies that hire between 50 to 100 a year.

In the next five years, Lion forecasts to hire up to 1,000. According to PT Lion Group president and director, Rusdi Kirana, the high aircraft orders they have made would certainly need pilots.

"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 said. Lion has placed an order of 381 new aircraft. In February, they made an order to buy 230 aircraft worth US$ 22 billion from Boeing, which is said to be the single largest contract in commercial aviation history.

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. Applicants need to pass a writen 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.

According to Rusdi they could take experienced pilots but they prefer the younger generation. To date they have 20 experienced pilots.

"We have a training school and we do train those from high school. Even for these cadets, we have to help them get a loan from the bank for the training. Indirectly we are guaranteeing the loan a cadet takes from the banks."

"Once that happens, we will send the graduates to Indonesia for aircraft type training. They can stay in our dormitory there for free but they will have to pay for their food, which is reasonably priced because the area is not in the centre of Jakarta. They can then fly with Lion Grup and follow our pilots and they can be the co-pilot. They will need to clock in 200 hours, which is about 80 hours per month, so the whole process can take three to four months."

600 unemployed pilots to finally secure jobs at Malindo and Lion

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