 "Question of safety: Air India, Jet may need fresh flying permits as DGCA tightens screws")
New Delhi - When India was demoted to category II safety status by the Federal Aviation Administration of the US earlier this year, industry experts felt the American agency was being unfair. But the downgrade and its aftermath have helped Indian airlines and government agencies clean up their act, which can only be good for flyers.
Did you know that the certification process for airlines like Air India and Jet Airways - legacy carriers which have existed for decades and which have defined air travel in this country for long - has been flawed till now?
Had the FAA not downgraded India, the completely lax ways of the airline bosses and the aviation regulatory authorities would never have come under scrutiny. Re-certification basically means looking at almost all processes of an airline and providing it a flying permit afresh.
Sources close to the developments told Firstbiz that aviation regulator DGCA has begun the process of re-certifying Air India and Jet Airways before another audit by the FAA.
“The FAA team may arrive in December, but before that we need to correct the wrong practices being followed in the airline certification process. Everything has been laid down, exists on paper but much of it has been bypassed, ignored or not followed. Re-certification will ensure that every rule which defines an airline and its flying permit will have to be followed strictly,” a source said.
He said both the airlines will need to even conduct ‘Proving Flights’ - something only an airline which wants to fly for the first time and needs a flying permit is required to do at present.
This basically means a complete overhaul of all processes related to safety, training and licensing being re-examined at two of India’s oldest airlines. Already, Indian airlines have been ticked off for lax safety procedures after DGCA conducted a comprehensive engineering audit of all airlines this summer.
Jet Airways is already in some trouble after the DGCA issued show cause notices to over 100 pilots of the airline earlier. It found the pilots were flying with lapsed proficiency check certificates. Some lapses were also found with SpiceJet’s engineering checks.
The source said that Air India and Jet Airways are being re-certified first since they have sizeable number of international flights and the FAA may raise objections in their case more - both the airlines have existing flights to the US.
This process of re-certification of airlines will later be extended to the LCCs. But immediately, it affects start-up airline Vistara the most, since this means longer processes to be followed before Vistara gets a flying permit.
Vistara has just received its first aircraft with livery - it was earlier expected to launch flights around Diwali but now, because of a delay in getting its first aircraft and also due to the re-certification process being done by the DGCA, the launch could be delayed by a couple of months.Vistara is a joint venture between Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines.
The FAA had downgraded India to category II status after it found that the DGCA did not have enough flight operations inspectors and its officials were not trained on the type of aircraft flying in India. The source quoted earlier said vacancies are being filled gradually and the regulator is now prepared for another FAA audit.
But the question remains: Why were airlines allowed to bypass existing norms and given permission to fly by the DGCA? Flying permits are periodically renewed. Why was compliance not checked at that stage?
If airlines need to amend their ways, what does this entire re-certification process say about DGCA choosing to look the other way when rules were either being flouted or bypassed with impunity by these airlines?
The fake pilot scam is already a deep blemish on Indian aviation when some years back pilots with fake flying hours were allowed to operate aircraft by various airlines.
We must now wake up and overhaul our entire aviation regulatory mechanism without delay.
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