Expatriate pilots for SriLankan Airlines

The Minister of Ports, Shipping and Aviation, Nimal Siripala de Silva, went on record a few days ago saying that if all the pilots in SriLankan Airlines leave, he will get foreign pilots to replace them. He stated this at a joint programme of CAASL and IATA on Aviation Day at Katunayake on Friday, July 14, 2023, surrounded by a group of aviation experts who could have advised him better. Instead of treating the symptoms, shouldn’t the root cause be identified and rectified?

It is easier said than done to employ an expatriate pilot. SriLankan Airlines would have to offer a substantial world-class salary in comparison to the relative pittance currently paid to local pilots. During the pandemic the SriLankan Airlines management halved the pilots’ pay and pegged the value of their US-dollar based salaries to an unrealistically arbitrary low figure.

In addition, foreign pilots must be paid loss of licence Insurance, accommodation allowances, and education allowances for their children. There would possibly be reasonable income tax concessions too. All this will add to the fixed costs of running the airline. Yet without those emoluments as part of a remuneration package, expatriate pilots wouldn’t even consider the idea of joining SriLankan Airlines.

Some time ago, with the initiation of Sri Lanka’s tax reforms, it was suggested by this writer that the national (local) pilots’ income tax should be paid by the airline; if necessary, payment of ‘Tax on Tax’. Unfortunately, this suggestion fell on deaf ears and the exodus of pilots to greener pastures began.

On the other hand, if housing and educational assistance anywhere in the world are offered to national pilots, some of them might decide to stay. To get a fair idea of what would have to be offered along with a good housing contract signed by the airline, it must be mentioned that one Far Eastern airline paid $600 per child per month as education fees to a maximum of three children, and offered to match half of the excess school/university fees anywhere in the world. Another airline offered concessional travel to the domestic help of the expatriate families. I am also told that when SriLankan Airlines advertised for expatriate crew there were not many takers.

That philosophy heeds the advice of the late Lee Kuan Yew, former founding Prime Minister of Singapore, who famously said, “You pay peanuts, you get monkeys”.

Another consideration when foreign pilots are employed is the additional extensive security and background checks that must be carried out. In the past, our national carrier was led by a succession of fakes and impostors who laid claim to being what they were not. The knowledge and experience of prospective pilot candidates must always be verified, without exception. With the proof of that proverbial pudding always in its eating, a flight simulator check with senior pilots as examiners needs to be carried out.

A supposed foreign ‘captain’ who when tested prior to employment in a Boeing 707 aircraft simulator, attempted to maintain altitude using a clock on the instrument panel and failed miserably, Naturally, he was discontinued and sent home – but as a first class passenger wearing an Air Lanka captain’s uniform, four stripes and all.

When Air Lanka was formed in 1979, recruitment, training and testing of pilots for Sri Lanka’s new flag-carrier were carried out by Singapore Airlines. Nevertheless, there were some expatriate contenders who passed the initial practical selection test but subsequently turned out to have held only Senior First Officer positions without ever being captains in their original (home) airline. However, by the time this was discovered, they had already passed the Air Lanka captain’s handling test, been released on the airline’s routes, and were flying safely without any incidents in those first few months. Consequently, Air Lanka had to ‘bite the bullet’ and keep them employed as captains.

Later, Air Lanka received applications from expatriate pilots who had many hours of experience but never worked as captains in big jets. Once, a crop-dusting pilot flew as an airline pilot. But his lack of knowledge of something as basic as the ICAO phonetic alphabet exposed him.

Another instance was that of a simulator engineer who flew as an expatriate First Officer (co-pilot) in Air Lanka’s Lockheed L-1011 TriStar fleet.

Then there was an American pilot aptly named ‘Smith’ who had been recruited, trained and subsequently ‘let go’ from a Middle Eastern airline, but only when it was discovered later that he didn’t have airline flying experience. At that airline he had used a different name. Yet, he somehow he ended up in Air Lanka as a qualified captain. His colleagues on the flight deck did, however, observe that he chose not to make announcements to passengers over the PA system, probably because he had never been an airline captain and was consequently ‘mike-shy’. However, during an unexpected delay one day he was forced to make a PA announcement at the request of the chief steward. His ‘PA’ went something like this: “Hi folks, this is your Captain. If you look to your left, you’ll see that man on the wing. While he is up there, we ain’t going nowhere.”

The list of wannabe captains of Air Lanka/ SriLankan Airlines goes on.

However, a majority of good expat professionals did form the backbone of the airline and taught many useful things to Lankan first officers. Even then, however, there were no guarantees of high standards. The Sri Lankan pilots learnt both what to do and what not to do.

Air Lanka had a successful scheme for employing expatriate captains retiring from Singapore Airlines at 60 years of age, who were offered an extension to work a further period of two years in Air Lanka with permission granted by Civil Aviation Authority Sri Lanka (CAASL). These captains set the tone and contributed to the company’s culture, with all other expatriate captains and first officers forced to fall in line. The retirement age for airline captains has since has been raised to 65, and it will soon be 67 provided they continue to maintain medical fitness.

At present there is a world shortage of pilots. Would it be timely to consider and effect a two-pronged strategy by way of remedy? Firstly, to stem the brain drain by not ‘pinching pennies’, and, secondly, giving pilots a proper world-standard wage instead of short-changing them? It should not be forgotten that by the very nature of their profession, an aircrew is responsible for the safe handling of millions of dollars of the airline’s assets, not to mention the hundreds of lives in their care.

Sri Lanka has approximately 200 qualified, young, enthusiastic and bright but unemployed commercial pilots, possessing knowledge and basic skills but not the requisite jet aircraft experience. SriLankan Airlines has flight simulators that could impart that all-important experience. Why couldn’t the relevant authorities institute an intensive cadet pilot ‘bridging’ programme for, say, 15 candidates at a time, designed and run by experienced local pilots who have worked all over the world and are now living in retirement in Sri Lanka? A similar accelerated, intensive exercise was successfully carried out by a Singaporean company during the establishment of Mihin Lanka approximately 10 years ago.

But the selection process should be stringent. Unlike the expatriates who drift in and out of the airline, the background records of potential local recruits are meticulously kept by local flying training schools. This process will, to all intents and purposes, be an alternative means of compliance to achieve the high standards required for SriLankan Airlines’ first officers, many of whom could be tomorrow’s airline captains. It will certainly be a better alternative to hiring unknown expatriate pilots. This training is called a Multi Crew Cooperation Course (MCC) and is a world-approved programme available to fast-track qualified aviators with only single-pilot, single-engine aircraft experience to becoming twin-engine jet crewmembers. Along with a Jet Orientation Course (JOC), they could be taught to work as a team in a multi crew environment.

Perhaps, therein lies a workable, well-designed and well-monitored solution to increase the SriLankan Airlines pilot cadres to the required level.

‘Guwan Seeya’