Air India has announced plans to establish a Flying Training Organization (FTO) at Amravati in Maharashtra, South Asia.
It will be the first FTO to be operated by an Indian airline. The facility is expected to be operational in Amravati’s Belora airport by Q1, 2026.
This pilot training facility should be capable of instructing 180 commercial pilots every year. The initiative, backed by the Maharashtra Airport Development Company (MADC), aims to improve pilot training capacity in India.
“The FTO at Amravati will be a significant step towards making Indian aviation more self-reliant and offering more opportunities to the youth in India to fulfill their ambitions of flying as pilots,” Campbell Wilson, MD & CEO of Air India, commented in a press release. “The young pilots coming out of this FTO will fuel Air India’s ambition of becoming a world-class airline, as it moves ahead in its transformation journey.”
The facility will have 31 single-engine aircraft and three twin-engine aircraft for training. It will also feature a training institute spread over 10 acres, along with digital classrooms, hostels, digitalized operations center and its own maintenance facility.
Earlier this year, Air India announced the opening of a Training Academy in Gurugram, spread across 600,000 square feet, considered to be the largest in South Asia so far.