The FAA's downgrade of India to Category II as "India is not in compliance with the international standards for aviation safety oversight" has been a long-drawn affair going back over six years and the Indian government's response has been, to say the least, tardy.
The tragedy of all this is that the issue, by implication, also involves domestic aviation safety and applies to India's airlines. Insofar as the US is concerned, the FAA looks at countries which fly to America.
Had India's airlines not been flying to the US they would not have done anything.
What we need to do is examine the level of safety (not to be confused with security) oversight by the government in light of the massive growth of our aviation sector over the last two decades.
Our metro airports have become as good as the best in the world, and smaller airports are also coming up. Our airlines have some of the youngest fleets in the world; younger on the average than US fleets.
Then what is the issue bothering FAA (and ICAO)? In international aviation there are three major players that determine the levels of safety.
The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), the specialised agency of the UN dealing with aviation does a safety audit of all countries but does not give grades. It was the first to point out that India's safety apparatus is not in a good state.
Then we have the US' FAA which looks into the state of safety of civil aviation of a country whose aircrafts fly into their country and if found wanting, downgrades it to category II.
And finally the European Union also does a similar audit and then bars a particular airline from flying into its region.
While India's safety audit record has not been good under the ICAO audit, it was the US FAA that had been pointing out to India the serious gaps in its aviation safety supervisory set up. The issue of lack of supervisory arrangements by Director General Civil Aviation (DGCA), a sub-ordinate office of the Ministry of Civil Aviation, which is also the licensor and safety regulator for the sector, has been a matter of concern internationally.
12/02/14 Sanat Kaul/Daily Mail
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The tragedy of all this is that the issue, by implication, also involves domestic aviation safety and applies to India's airlines. Insofar as the US is concerned, the FAA looks at countries which fly to America.
Had India's airlines not been flying to the US they would not have done anything.
What we need to do is examine the level of safety (not to be confused with security) oversight by the government in light of the massive growth of our aviation sector over the last two decades.
Our metro airports have become as good as the best in the world, and smaller airports are also coming up. Our airlines have some of the youngest fleets in the world; younger on the average than US fleets.
Then what is the issue bothering FAA (and ICAO)? In international aviation there are three major players that determine the levels of safety.
The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), the specialised agency of the UN dealing with aviation does a safety audit of all countries but does not give grades. It was the first to point out that India's safety apparatus is not in a good state.
Then we have the US' FAA which looks into the state of safety of civil aviation of a country whose aircrafts fly into their country and if found wanting, downgrades it to category II.
And finally the European Union also does a similar audit and then bars a particular airline from flying into its region.
While India's safety audit record has not been good under the ICAO audit, it was the US FAA that had been pointing out to India the serious gaps in its aviation safety supervisory set up. The issue of lack of supervisory arrangements by Director General Civil Aviation (DGCA), a sub-ordinate office of the Ministry of Civil Aviation, which is also the licensor and safety regulator for the sector, has been a matter of concern internationally.
12/02/14 Sanat Kaul/Daily Mail
