1st woman DGCA chief Sathiyavathy to take charge next week

The first woman chief of aviation regulator DGCA M Sathiyavathy is likely to take charge from incumbent Prabhat Kumar early next week, officials said today.
Sathiyavathi, a 1982-batch IAS officer of the UT cadre, has been appointed as the Director General of Civil Aviation for three years till 2017. She is likely to take charge on Monday, the officials said.
Kumar, a 1985-batch IAS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre who was appointed in January last year as the DGCA head for three years, would revert to his home cadre.
The top-level change comes at a time when DGCA is faced with a review report of the US regulator Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which had downgraded its safety ranking to Category-II on par with countries like Bangladesh, Barbados, Ghana and Nicaragua.

India was till January last year holding the topmost safety ranking Category-I.
Kumar had taken a series of steps and brought in several regulations to enhance aviation safety to resolve the deficiencies pointed out by the FAA.

The FAA, which held its third audit of DGCA only last month, is likely to come up with its assessment over India's safety mechanism by February. Following this, it would decide whether or not to revert India to the top Category-I.
Kumar had initiated several measures and come up with new regulations to enhance safety of air operations. The measures included carrying out surprise checks on airlines, non- scheduled operators and chopper firms to test whether the mandatory safety requirements were being fulfilled by them.

Sathiyavathy, who was appointed as Additional Secretary and Financial Advisor to the Civil Aviation Ministry in February and had served as Puducherry's chief secretary before that, is due for elevation as Secretary by July.
The DGCA chief's position has so far gone to IAS officers of the rank of Joint Secretary or Additional Secretary.