Aviation safety blues

It's time to wake up to the ground realities

The International Civil Aviation Organisation's (ICAO) reported plan to do a second audit of India's aviation safety, within two years, has raised concerns over whether the country's safety standards are in line with global norms. The aviation ministry has downplayed such misgivings and said the audit is only an extension of the earlier one and that India scored better than the global average in airworthiness, air navigation services, operations and licensing in the first audit conducted in 2015. However, the ground reality is that the country scored low in legislation and organisation and very low in accident investigation and aerodromes. Recent data show that the number of safety violations is rising, which points to inadequate training standards and safety oversight. According to the government's statement in Parliament in May, in the 15-month period till March 2016, there were 35 "near-miss" incidents in the Indian skies. A recent Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) handout stated there have been 280 "incidents" so far this year compared to 275 in all of last year.

A sharper focus on adherence to global safety norms is important in the context of airlines in India rushing to buy new planes - while Indigo, the nation's biggest carrier, has ordered 430 aircraft, SpiceJet is negotiating a deal to buy 150 aircraft and Go Air has said it will buy 72 A320neos. Boeing has estimated that Indian carriers need 1,740 aircraft over the next two decades as the new civil aviation policy, unveiled in June, seeks to revive many of the idle airports to enhance regional connectivity. As air travel heats up in the world's fastest-growing major aviation market, infrastructure has clearly failed to keep pace with traffic growth. The average time an aircraft spends circling before it can land in Mumbai during peak hours is between 45 minutes to an hour - much higher than 25 minutes for Singapore and zero for Qatar. To improve airport infrastructure, often considered hopelessly inadequate by experts, India plans to invest $5 billion.

A severe shortage of air traffic controllers (ATCOs) in India's airports is adding to the worry. The ICAO, of which India is a member, had, in fact, red-flagged the shortage in its earlier report. While the current requirement is of 3,500 controllers, there are only about 2,500 controllers. The Delhi airport, for example, needs 600 ATCOs, but employs only 360; the Mumbai airport has only 265 ATCOs against the requirement of at least 550. Worse still, air traffic controllers shun employment with the state-run Airports Authority of India because of low salaries. The working condition of ATCOs has also come under the scanner many times - the latest being a letter written by the Air Traffic Controllers' Guild (Western Region). The letter says since Mumbai ATCOs are bound to perform 18 hours of extra duty per month, the effective number of hours of duty per week by a Mumbai controller would go up to 45 hours, which, in turn, would be a serious health and safety hazard. There is an immediate need to review the entire safety issue if India hopes to keep its aviation flag flying.