The year gone by has not been a delightful one for civil aviation in India. There was no major accident, but a series of trends and incidents cast an interrogation mark over safety in the air.

There was a case of smoke in the cabin of a SpiceJet flight, an Air Asia India flight lost a fairing pane in the air, incidents of non-compliance with laid down safety-related procedures and several alarming in-flight events.

The pressures are revenue driven. Some of the underlying issues relate to non-availability of engines and other spares and components for some airlines which have grounded aircraft. As a result, airlines are being forced to take shortcuts and tweak utilisation rates (number of hours an aircraft is utilised in a calendar day) of the unaffected aircraft on their fleets thus leading to flight delays.

SpiceJet appeared to be under huge financial pressure as it reported heavy losses, especially in quarter-ended June 30, and struggled to meet vendor and aircraft lessor payments, with one lessor approaching the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to register three aircraft leased to SpiceJet and two banks, classifying their loans to SpiceJet as ‘high risk’. Finally, the DGCA had to order the airline to slash flights to 50 per cent for eight weeks.

At frequent intervals through the year, the Minister for Civil Aviation assured the public that surveillance had been stepped up and that there was no need to be concerned about air safety. In August, the DGCA began a two-month long special safety audit of all airlines; the last such audit had been conducted in the aftermath of the Kozhikode accident in which 19 passengers and the crew perished. The special audit involved a wide spectrum of assets and activities of all airlines.

During November, the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO) carried out an audit of DGCA under the Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme (USOAP) and gave it a 85.49 per cent score elevating it to 48th position in the global civil aviation community. This was still far from the top of the table but a great upward ascent from the 102nd position it occupied since the last audit in 2018.

In the aftermath of the ICAO audit, news reports, no doubt furnished by SpiceJet, attributed the high rating to ICAO’s audit of the airline. This misinformation was immediately remedied by ICAO, clarifying that it only audits the regulator and did not visit any airline during its audit.

An unusual clustering of safety related minor incidents could be coincidental or may be a portent of a major disaster lurking around the corner. However, as almost all airlines are under revenue pressures, a connection emerges between airlines’ financial state and safety related incidents.

Perhaps the time has come for considering a financial audit of airlines from the air safety point of view. While routine surveillance by the DGCA scrutinises the availability of adequate skilled manpower, equipment, spares, internal processes, etc., it may be apposite to have a direct insight into how curtailed budgets lead to shortcuts, workarounds, subterfuges, and lip service to the letter of some regulations while ignoring the spirit behind them.

The DGCA is unlikely to have the staff or the expertise to carry out such financial audits but the investment into a department for this purpose would pay dividends in terms of increased air safety and passenger confidence.

The writer is a retired Gp Capt and a former COO of a commercial airline

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