Safety is aviation’s main priority. The Indian aviation regulator DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation) has approved 25007 weekly flights, translating to 3572 daily departures on an average. Over 4.4 billion travellers flew safely in 2023 despite an increasingly complex operating environment. Passenger traffic amounted to over 376 million at airports across India in financial year 2024, out of which close to 69.6 million were international passengers. As of December 31, 2023, there were 771 aircraft in the fleets of scheduled airline operators in India. With this humongous size of India Aviation, is the prime agency DGCA competent enough to handle the safety of passengers. An Experienced pilot Captain S. Panesar explains the sordid saga of DGCA
Once upon a time in late 50s all private operators were amalgamated into two National Public Sector aviation i.e. India Airlines Corporation & Air India Corporation were born. These two National carriers were becoming an eye sore for foreign Airlines since their operations were the best performing Airlines in India and the World.
At that time in our Govt our regulatory bodies i.e. Ministry of Civil Aviation and Director General of Civil Aviation were appointed, which had good knowledge of Aviation. These Aviation regulatory body (DGCA) changed rapidly by misguiding politicians as the political scenario changed. There were three committees appointed by the Govt of India to improve Aviation Rules. One was Tata Committee, others were Kelkar Committee and IAF Experts committee, and these committees advised Govt not to amalgamate/merge Indian Airlines & Air India, but the Minister of Civil Aviation did not bother & amalgamated these two National Carriers. It is important to note that the then DGCA also advised against the merger.
Govt of India appointed another committee known as Air Marshal JK Seth committee, this Seth committee reported that the DGCA does not have expertise of Aviation, nor they have any knowledge how to check Safety of Aviation. Air Marshal marked in his report that the DGCA is like that they are the Jury & they are the Judges. He even recommended that the Aircraft Incidents $ accidents are being investigated by the DGCA who have NO experience of investigations & the investigation of aircraft incident & accidents should be separated & done by Aviation experts. Even there was hue & cry by Aviation Experts regarding this same decision. The DGCA officials used to investigations on hearsay basis and their reports were decided by the politicians. To the good luck of Aviation Govt decided to separate investigations by a Board known as AAIB (Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau). But to the bad luck of Aviation this board is also devoid of Aviation experienced persons and reportedly and allegedly all illiterate persons from DGCA were recruited and promoted into AAIB.
Secondly, the alleged professional corruption in DGCA is on the rise because the earlier DGCA had No Aviation experience or knowledge but being a bureaucrat they were appointed as DGCA. The aviation industry is full of such cases where the DGCA pronounced ridiculous judgements & passed insignificant decisions.
We are not sure as of today, but earlier even Fake pilots Licences were issued i.e. A Pilot who submits his papers for an issue of Pilots licence (CPL) the clerk in training section does not know or aware whether timings of flights are correct or not, he is only bothered to check total hours of Day Solo, Night Solo etc, even he is not aware whether from Delhi to Agra flight Pilot has logged eight or two hrs, since he is neither aware of aircraft type nor the operation of flight.
Another Department in DGCA is known as Flight Inspection Directorate in which DGCA has taken Pilots on deputation from different Airlines, after FAA gave a bad report of regulatory body & these inspectors are not fully trained for inspection of Aviation field
We have two Directors, of DGCA earlier who were not only having Pilots Licences but were honest in taking decisions. One was Shri GC Arya & the other was Shri Sivaraman. Sivaraman was the most firebrand DGCA and used to consult all officers, Aviation experts before taking decision on any issue related to Safety of Aviation in India. The recent DGCA who has been transferred to Ministry of Coal as Secretary had done enough damage to aviation safety. We only pray that the Govt of India through Ministry of Civil Aviation rise to occasion & appoint DGCA who has enough knowledge of Aviation & honest in taking actions.
After privatisation of civil aviation, the alleged professional corruption has multiplied that even if one talk to any Pilot, aircraft Engineer or any other staff related to Aviation, one will be shocked to know as to How Unsafe conditions are persisting in Indian Aviation.
It will not be out of place to mention inexperience, ill knowledge of Aircraft incidents/Accidents that one Crash took place at Calicut of an Air India Express Boeing-737 aircraft in which 20 persons died & both Pilots also died and more than 100 passengers suffered injuries. The MOCA instead of getting the investigation done by a Judicial committee, handed over to a committee of persons from DGCA who were neither experts in investigations of accidents nor any flying knowledge.
This committee gave a report in almost 282 pages without any concrete reasons whereas as per Aviation experts, the report could have been given in not more than 15 pages. The surprise came when Govt of India, through MOCA, appointed a High-Level committee consisting of Secretary MOCA, the then DGCA, former Retd Chief of Air Staff & three more officers from Airports Authority of India to go and give a report regarding implementations of the recommendations of earlier report by experts. One will be shocked that this implementation of report is given in more than 800 pages. It is reported that none of the committee members were expert in Aviation nor they had patience to read 800 pages. It is yet to be known what the implementations were have been followed & implemented.
This is the state of affairs of Safety in Indian Aviation when you hand over Regulatory body in the hands of inexperienced experts.
