Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta has given coaching institutes one month to fix fire safety or face action. But a ground visit to the city’s clusters of flying academies, where students pay lakhs to chase a pilot’s licence, suggests many still ignore the rules.

Under Delhi’s building bylaws, every building needs a safe way out in a fire. A single staircase is permitted only if it meets fire department norms. Educational buildings taller than 9 metres, or with ground-plus-two floors including a mezzanine, must have two staircases, and every exit must lead straight to the street. Norms also specify the need for safety equipment such as fire extinguishers. 

Very little of that holds in the aviation belt around Ramphal Chowk and Palam Metro Station, where aviation coaching has become a cottage industry. Several private academies sit packed together. Those who have just finished class 12 pay between Rs 1.5 lakh and Rs 3 lakh for a six-to-eight-month course to prepare for the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) pilot licence exams. 

But what they are training inside, our visit found, are windowless rooms served by a single staircase, choked approaches, and, in some cases, not a single fire extinguisher or exit sign. 

The first academy we entered was Vinod Yadav Aviation Academy. It occupies a ground-plus-three building. The ground floor runs a cosmetics store; the first floor holds a faculty room and a classroom of 30 aspiring pilots training from 8:30 am to 5:30 pm. The second and........

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