DGCA moves to start licensing air traffic controllers

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has drafted rules for licensing air traffic control officers (ATCOs) and would soon send them to the government for approval.

The licensing rules for ATCOs had already been drafted and “we will be sending them for government approval very soon,” official sources said today.

After the government approved the rules and notified, the ATCOs would be subjected to licensing by the DGCA’s newly-established Air Traffic Management Directorate, the sources said.

India is facing an acute shortage of ATCOs, with the recent official figures showing there are a total of 1,630 ATC officers, against a sanctioned strength of 2,107, despite a recruitment drive being initiated.

This has led to heightening of workload on the ATCOs. The Justice Lahoti Commission, which was studying the mid-air collision over Charkhi Dadri near Delhi in November 1996, killing all 349 people on board the two aircraft, had also pointed this out several years ago.

The Commission had observed “the workload of the (air traffic) controller was definitively excessive”. It had also observed “the Indian government adopted an Open sky policy but the same has... resulted in... tremendous increase in air traffic without matching additions to ATC infrastructure”.

The sources said the licensing of ATCOs would be based on international standards according to the parameters laid down by the UN-body, the International Civil Aviation Organisation.

Regarding training and re-training facilities for the ATCOs, they said ATCOs underwent a 6-month to a year-long training at the Allahabad-based Civil Aviation Training College, before being inducted into active work.