Kingfisher Airlines plans training centres

If you are looking at a high flying career as airlines cabin crew or in the hospitality industry, your options have got widened. Kingfisher Airlines is going to open three centres of its training academy in the capital.

The Kingfisher Training Academy, which already has a year old centre in Mumbai, plans to set up 25 centres by 2010.

Out of these, 12 centres are coming up in next two months including three in Delhi at Rajouri Garden, South Extension and Kingsway Camp. A fourth one in Central Delhi is also in the pipeline, airline officials said.

The academy would offer two courses — a six-month training program in aviation and hospitality, with a fee of Rs 1 lakh and a 12-month programme in hospitality in hotel industry and aviation and hospitality training with a fee of Rs. 1.25 lakh. "We have tied up with banks for education loans and the repayment would start only when students get a job," Executive Vice- President of Kingfisher Airlines and the Academy's chief mentor Rajesh Verma said.

"The starting salary for cabin crew now could be up to Rs. 40,000," he said.

Verma said each batch will have 30 students and one centre could run 40 batches in a day. "The standard of the education in our academy would be very high," he said. He added that airlines are not happy with the students churned out by different institutes and the Kingfisher Academy would provide better training as they knew what is required by the industry.

"Our Mumbai students have got 100 per cent placement and we expect the same placement in Kingfisher, other airlines and the hospitality industry from our other centres. Kingfisher's own requirement is very large," Verma said. The airlines would require about 4,000 cabin crew in the next one year, he said.

He said 50 per cent of cabin crew in all airlines comes from Northern India and that is why three centres are being opened in the capital alone. The academy plans to train 6-8,000 students across centres in 2008. Centres are also coming up in cities like Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Pune, Kolkata, Nagpur, Jaipur and Indore.