Indian aviation — safe but not sound

An entirely forgettable chapter in Indian civil aviation history ended recently when the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) upgraded India’s safety rating to Category One. The downgrade to Category Two in January 2014 had placed India in ignominious company along with 13 countries with poor safety records in civil aviation.

To add insult to injury, Indian airlines flying to the US were curtailed from starting new flights to that country; and the existing ones were subject to additional surveillance. The irony was that it was not the airlines’ fault but that of the Director General Civil Aviation (DGCA), the regulatory body tasked to govern the safety aspects of civil aviation.

Why has the DGCA not been able to accomplish this simple mandate of assuring safe operations?

A major flaw is the insistence of the government to place a generalist to head this highly technical and professional body. There is no doubt about the administrative capabilities of IAS officers selected for the job, but the establishment has not paid heed to the industry’s for an aviation professional as the DG. It now appears likely that this will happen now on account of the FAA having said that the DG as well as other key officials of the DGCA should have technical knowledge of the sector.

Another weak area has been shortage of manpower in the DGCA’s ranks. As a considerable proportion of the safety oversight consists of physical surveillance and audit activities requiring the presence of DGCA inspectors on site, the dearth of adequate manpower has directly translated into deficiencies in oversight.

The Flight Standards Directorate is the most afflicted. This is the department responsible for the oversight of flight operations. Even after the rude jolt given by the FAA audit which pointed out the shortfall of manpower as a major issue, the DGCA’s reaction was sluggish. Some in the know aver that one of the reasons is that the salary of a pilot (required to carry out flight operations inspection) would be much more than that of the DG, an IAS officer. Those who know our civil services can now understand the reluctance of DGCA to hire pilots and place them in salary slabs above the DG’s. So for years, the DGCA coerced airlines to ‘second’ Flight Operations Inspectors from the pilots employed by the airlines and being paid by them. Since the January 2014 downgrade, there was a flurry of activity to hire more pilots as inspectors.

The thumb rule worldwide is about one inspector for every 10 aircraft whose operations are to be inspected. Even until the upgrade by the FAA, the required number of 75 had not been reached.

There are many other acts of omission that point to the DGCA’s inadequacy. While the mandated tasks continue to be performed inadequately, it frequently distends its reach into areas not really defined in its tasks. A review of the archaic Aircraft Act is a necessity. An associated graduation from the DGCA model to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) model would have brought in enough autonomy and financial independence to bring about reform in the way safety is regulated, overseen and nurtured. The BJP government did bring out a new draft civil aviation policy but it failed to generate enthusiasm for it.

The civil aviation industry has been internally haemorrhaging since the second wave of liberalisation was unsheathed by Air Deccan’s advent in 2003. Government policies have been largely apathetic to the industry, regulation has been tardy and inadequate, taxation has been extortionate, and the expensive crutches to help a lame Air India waddle along have been provided at the cost of taxpayers’ money and other airline’s penury.

Clearly the time has come to elevate civil aviation from its current status.

The writer is a retired Group Captain and a former Chief Operations Officer of an airline

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