India Creates Air-Safety Council

New Delhi: India is creating a new advisory council to monitor aviation-safety issues and investigate accidents, after an Air India jetliner crash on May 22 that killed 158 people.
Aviation-safety experts have been urging India to beef up its policing of airlines and create a new body to evaluate the industry that is separate from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, which currently oversees all aviation regulatory matters in India.
The Indian airline sector expanded rapidly in recent years, with passenger air traffic more than doubling to 69 million between 2005 and 2009. During the boom years, many airlines were adding six or more aircraft each month. That rapid growth made it harder to uphold safety standards, experts say.
The initiative to create the council was already underway before the crash on May 22 of an Air India Express Boeing 737-800 jet in the southern city of Mangalore, he said. The council will help investigate that accident. Indian and U.S. authorities are already working to find the reason for the crash after recovering the "black box" with flight data.
The council, which will be made up of about 15 to 20 people, will provide input to the DGCA but will operate separately from it.
Nasim Zaidi, director general of civil aviation at the Civil Aviation Ministry, said the "Aviation Consulting Council" will include officials with expertise in areas such as aeronautics, flight operations and safety.
The council will provide recommendations to the DGCA in areas such as air navigation, monitoring of flight operations and critical airports—those with features that make safety issues more complex, Mr. Zaidi said.
He said one key area will be to "gauge human performance and training of pilots, co-pilots and other crew members."
27/05/10 Vibhuti Agarwal and Amol Sharma/Wall Street Journal

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General May 2010, Safety May 2010