Air Force Test Pilots School


Date Raised : 1973-07-01 Location : Bangalore
The Indian Air Force Test Pilots School (IAFTPS) trains flight test crew on both fixed wing as well as rotary wing aircraft. Set up in 1973, it is one of the seven test pilots schools in the world and the only one in Asia. The school commenced with training of production test pilots and expanded to the training of experimental test pilots in 1976 and training of flight test engineers in 1983. Training of rotary wing test crew commenced in 1989. In 2011, the training of test crew on remotely piloted aircraft was commenced. For the flagship Experimental Test Pilot and Flight Test Engineer course, the students follow a rigorous 46-week curriculum. There are two streams for training— Rotary Wing and Fixed Wing. Hence, there are four entry streams — RW TP, RW FTE, FW TP and FW FTE. The FTEs have two sub-streams — FTE and FTE (Avionics). Occasionally, under a special arrangement, engineers from non-military organisations involved with aviation such as DRDO, NAL or HAL also get admitted for the FTE course. As of 2019, 296 Test Pilots and 136 Flight Test Engineers had been trained at the school since 1973.
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Commanding Officers

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DatesRank & NameNumberRemarksLocationPhoto
01 Jul 73 to 01 May 75Squadron Leader Joseph Thomas6496 GD(P)OCBangalore
01 Jun 75 to 01 Jan 76Squadron Leader Philip Rajkumar6748 GD(P)OCBangalore
01 Feb 76 to 01 Jun 77Wing Commander Palamadai Muthuswamy Ramachandran4973 GD(P)OCBangalore
01 Jul 77 to 01 Oct 79Wing Commander Ved Prakash Kala6340 GD(P)OCBangalore
21 Jan 80 to 17 Sep 81Wing Commander Philip Rajkumar6748 GD(P)OCBangalore
18 Sep 81 to 01 Sep 82Wing Commander Ravish Malhotra7673 GD(P)OCBangalore
01 Jan 83 to 01 Oct 83Wing Commander Pradeep Kumar Yadav9042 GD(P)OCBangalore
01 Oct 83 to 01 Sep 84Wing Commander Philip Rajkumar6748 GD(P)OCBangalore
01 Sep 84 to 01 Feb 85Wing Commander Pradeep Kumar Yadav9042 GD(P)OCBangalore
01 Feb 85 to 01 Aug 85Squadron Leader Parvez Hamilton Khokhar11860 GD(P)OCBangalore
01 Sep 85 to 01 Dec 85Wing Commander Parvez Hamilton Khokhar11860 GD(P)OCBangalore
01 Dec 85 to 01 Mar 86Squadron Leader Rajib Kumar Chakravorty12503 GD(P)OCBangalore
01 Aug 86 to 01 Aug 88Group Captain Ravish Malhotra7673 GD(P)OCBangalore
01 Aug 88 to 01 Jan 91Group Captain Pradeep Kumar Yadav9042 GD(P)OCBangalore
01 Jan 91 to 01 Dec 92Group Captain Pramod Kumar Mehra11581 GD(P)OCBangalore
01 Dec 92 to 01 Dec 93Group Captain Ajit Keshav Agtey12188 GD(P)OCBangalore
01 Dec 93 to 01 Jan 97Group Captain Gopal Ranjit Mohan12926 F(P)OCBangalore
01 May 97 to 01 Nov 99Group Captain Ravi Kant Sharma14088 F(P)OCBangalore
01 Nov 99 to 01 May 00Wing Commander Tapan Kumar Chatterjee14687 F(P)OCBangalore
01 Jun 00 to 01 Jun 03Group Captain Tapan Kumar Chatterjee14687 F(P)OCBangalore
01 Jul 03 to 01 Jun 05Group Captain Ravinder Kumar Dhir15678 F(P)OCBangalore
01 Jun 05 to 01 Nov 06Group Captain Ganesh Chand16214 F(P)OCBangalore
01 Dec 06 to 01 Aug 08Group Captain Balabhadra Radha Krishna17326 F(P)OCBangalore
01 Aug 08 to 01 Apr 11Group Captain Shridher Kishore Mohlah18259 F(P)OCBangalore
01 Apr 11 to 01 Sep 13Group Captain Sanjai Chauhan20466 F(P)OCBangalore
01 Jul 14 to 01 May 15Group Captain Satya Prakesh Srivastava22695 F(P)OCBangalore

Note: All the data available here is publicly available in the Gazette of India, published by the Indian Government, or from public domain sources, press releases about Awards and Right-To-Information (RTI) Requests. Additionally data shared by veterans is added to the page with permission. No data with respect to serving officers below the rank of AVM is displayed. Information in Gazette of India and Award citations and photographs as released by the Indian Air Force are the only details displayed.