Foreign, but not entirely safe

New Delhi: Michael James Fay-Doherty was one of the many expat pilots who came to India for a job at the height of the aviation boom in 2007, hoping perhaps that his criminal record and forged papers would go undetected by the understaffed aviation regulator in the country when passenger traffic had surged and pilots were in short supply.
Fay-Doherty wasn’t far off the mark. By the time his false credentials were discovered and he left the country, he had already flown in India for six months with India’s biggest low-cost airline, IndiGo, run by InterGlobe Aviation Pvt. Ltd.
Seventy-five months later, in January while investigating a flawed landing technique used by another IndiGo pilot, Parminder Kaur Gulati, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) found that she had produced a fictitious marksheet to obtain her commander’s licence.
The regulator then started scanning all the 4,500 pilot licences it had issued in the past five years. In an ensuing crackdown, the crime branch of the Delhi Police detained 22 people, including pilots, trainers and officials of DGCA. The last word hasn’t been heard yet on these cases.
As the investigations proceed, some aviation experts are asking if checks are being sidestepped in hiring procedures, in the process compromising air safety, even as Indian airlines prepare for a new boom in passenger traffic.
12/05/11 Tarun Shukla/Live Mint

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Categories: Foreign Jul 2011, Safety Jul 2011