Aviation regulator on track to meet US counterpart's conditions

DGCA confident of hiring 20 flight inspectors by next year to meet FAA's norm

India’s aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) will be able to meet its requirement of hiring flight operations inspectors (FIOs), fixed by the US regulator as a pre-condition to maintain its air safety upgrade.

According to government officials, the DGCA has 55 FIOs at present — only 20 short of the total number of inspectors required according US aviation watchdog Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)’s directive.

“At present, we have around 55 inspectors and we are confident we will be able to hire a total of 75 till next year,” said a senior civil aviation ministry official.

Earlier this month, the FAA had upgraded India’s air safety ranking, 14 months after the downgrade, allowing Indian carriers to expand their services to the US. The US regulator had flagged several shortcomings in January last year, including a shortage of full-time flight operation inspectors and lack of technical staff in DGCA, besides weak safety procedures. The FAA’s upgrade was a signal that India's aviation safety oversight is matching international standards.

The union Cabinet last year had cleared the appointment of 75 full-time inspectors. Since then, the DGCA has been on a hiring spree. The DGCA is recruiting the FIOs on a contractual basis for three years initially. On March 27, the DGCA published 21 such job vacancies on its website — 14 for FIOs and the rest, for senior FIOs. Before this, it had offered up to 24 positions for creating new FIOs this year.

According to DGCA officials, the regulator’s target is to appoint one FIO for every 10 aircraft in the country. Initially, the Indian regulator faced problems in hiring these inspectors mainly due to lack of applicants with the required qualification or because many applicants are not able to leave their jobs early enough.

An FIO is required to possess “an airline transport pilot’s license issued by DGCA” and have “a total experience of not less than 6,000 hours and not less than 5,000 hours as pilot-in-command on air transport aircraft.”

The role of FIOs is to primarily develop or revise specific training regulations, examine flight dispatchers’ training programme, examine the training manuals of airline operators, etc.

Although the civil aviation ministry sources ruled out the possibility of another FAA audit next year, it said the country will have to comply with the international safety standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

Following the FAA upgrade, Civil Aviation Minister P Ashok Gajapathi Raju had said the union government’s next task is to “be consistent to maintain the Category-I status.”

After a downgrade in January last year, FAA had completed an audit of India’s air safety in December. On March 30 and 31 this year, FAA representatives met government officials to discuss the corrective measures taken by DGCA since the December audit following which the upgrade was announced.

FAA’s main issue was hiring “adequate” FOIs on market-competitive salaries. It said the hiring FOIs on deputation from airlines led to conflict of interest and, thus, inadequate safety oversight by DGCA.