Rajasthan flying school to be reopened on PPP mode

JAIPUR: A governing council meeting of the Rajasthan State Flying School was held on Thursday. The council has decided to reopen the school at Sanganer in city.
The meeting was held under the chairmanship of chief minister Ashok Gehlot. It was decided that the school would be reopened under public-private partnership (PPP) mode. The move would not only help use of air strips but also provide opportunities in the aviation sector.
Gehlot said that 19 air strips were available in the state.These strips would be strengthened and the government would explore all opportunities in the aviation sector.
The CM also directed to take full advantage of the regional connectivity scheme Udaan to invite major airline operators and explore possibilities of air connectivity with major cities in the state. He suggested to explore the possibility of relaunching intra-state air service which would boost the tourism sector.
Officials said that at present the flying school has two planes and a motor glider to train aspiring pilots. “The flying school has a Cessna 172 four-seater plane and Cessna 152 two-seater plane. The school plans to add two more planes soon,” said an official.
As per the plan, a batch of 20 students would be given admission initially, officials said. The flying school hit headlines in 2008 when ACB exposed a scam in which one of the trainees of the school Nidhi Vashishtha approached the agency claiming that she was trained only for 22 hours whereas the chief flying officer Mahendra Chaudhary had mentioned 169 hours of flying in the school record and sent it to DGCA.
During investigation, it was revealed that 14 pilots had been issued flying certificates through dubious means by chief flying inspector of the school. These certificates were used by the pilots to get commercial pilot licences (CPL) from DGCA. Similar arrests were made in Delhi and Haryana too.