Aviation regulator DGCA has pulled up Spicejet, Air India and Air India Express for not being adequately prepared to deal with poor visibility during the winter.
Providing special training to pilots in order to help them deal with just about 15 days of fog-induced low visibility entails an additional cost that airlines are generally averse to incurring. Besides, it is quite a cumbersome task to get DGCA approval. Vistara and AirAsia India, for instance, were given the to go-ahead to fly in low-visibility conditions only last month, almost three years after they commenced operations. However, it took the country’s largest carrier, IndiGo, only five months to get DGCA's nod, meaning it was deemed capable to operate in low-visibility conditions in the very first winter of operations. This is the story of how IndiGo managed that almost a decade ago.
Every winter, fog conditions disrupt flights, giving the media a big enough reason to make a noise about flight schedules going haywire, and spurring the aviation ministry to take cognizance of the CAT-III compliance issue. The minister himself calls airline CEOs and owners to check on fog preparedness.
“Pilots need to have practised landings of minimum hours and simulator training and the DGCA has to be provided with supporting documents and data from flight data recorder,” says an operations head of an airline.
IndiGo promoters, Rahul Bhatia and Rakesh Gangwal, had to be given credit for putting in place a team that was trained to meet the operational grind characteristic of the highly-regulated Indian aviation sector.
09/12/16 Arindam Majumder/Business Standard
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Providing special training to pilots in order to help them deal with just about 15 days of fog-induced low visibility entails an additional cost that airlines are generally averse to incurring. Besides, it is quite a cumbersome task to get DGCA approval. Vistara and AirAsia India, for instance, were given the to go-ahead to fly in low-visibility conditions only last month, almost three years after they commenced operations. However, it took the country’s largest carrier, IndiGo, only five months to get DGCA's nod, meaning it was deemed capable to operate in low-visibility conditions in the very first winter of operations. This is the story of how IndiGo managed that almost a decade ago.
Every winter, fog conditions disrupt flights, giving the media a big enough reason to make a noise about flight schedules going haywire, and spurring the aviation ministry to take cognizance of the CAT-III compliance issue. The minister himself calls airline CEOs and owners to check on fog preparedness.
“Pilots need to have practised landings of minimum hours and simulator training and the DGCA has to be provided with supporting documents and data from flight data recorder,” says an operations head of an airline.
IndiGo promoters, Rahul Bhatia and Rakesh Gangwal, had to be given credit for putting in place a team that was trained to meet the operational grind characteristic of the highly-regulated Indian aviation sector.
09/12/16 Arindam Majumder/Business Standard
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