DGCA seeks review meeting with FAA over downgrading

New Delhi: DGCA, which was downgraded by Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in January mainly due to lack of sufficient number of fight inspectors, has appointed several of them and sought a review meeting with the US aviation regulator, Rajya Sabha was informed today.

“In all 35 regular Flight Operations Inspectors (FOIs) have been appointed, out of which 14 have joined so far. Additionally, six FOIs have been taken on contract for a one year period,” Minister of State for Civil Aviation GM Siddeshwara said in reply to a question on downgrading of India’s aviation safety rankings from top Category-I to II.

“Based on the above, DGCA has approached FAA for a meeting to provide them a status report of the progress made on each of their findings, so as to schedule its revisit to India,” he said.

The minister said the government has given a one-time approval to the DGCA to appoint 75 posts of regular chief FOIs, deputy chief FOIs, senior FOIs and FOIs “on contract from the market instead of going through the UPSC route”.

To another question, Siddeshwara said there have been 78 near misses of aircraft from 2011 till July this year, with the maximum of 29 incidents being reported in 2011, followed by 23 in 2013. In 2012, the figure was 18 while eight such incidents were reported between January and 8 July this year.

He said all incidents were reported to DGCA which has investigated them and made recommendations for implementation.

On foreign pilots, he said out of a total of 277 expatriate pilots, the maximum of 121 were in Jet Airways alone, as on 31 March this year, while private non-scheduled airlines together had 74 of them.

No-frill airline IndiGo 45 had expat pilots, while Air India and its subsidiary Alliance Air jointly had 22, SpiceJet had ten and cargo carrier Blue Dart five.

Government has restricted the issue of licenses to foreign pilots (Foreign Aircrew Temporary Authorisation) till December 2016, he said, admitting that there was a shortage of type-rated commanders in the country.

PTI