DGCA claims its audit by US FAA ‘very satisfactory’

New Delhi: The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which conducted an audit of India’s aviation regulator DGCA, has made certain “observations” related to “regulatory and guidance material”, on which time-bound action would be taken, the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation said on Sunday, claiming that the audit was “very satisfactory”. The FAA — under its International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA) programme — conducted the audit between July 16 and July 20 in areas covering “aircraft operations, airworthiness and personnel licensing”, the aviation regulator said, adding that “a written report will be provided within the next 30 days” (by the FAA) and that “thereafter a FAA team will come for a final consultation within 65 days, wherein the DGCA shall present the action taken on the observations”. However, the exact nature of the observations was not revealed officially from the DGCA.

In a statement, the DGCA said: “At the end of the five-day audit, the FAA team gave a verbal out-brief listing the observations which relate to regulatory and guidance material issues within DGCA. Overall the audit has been very satisfactory. As per FAA’s established process, a written report will be provided within the next 30 days and thereafter a FAA team will come for a final consultation within 65 days, wherein the DGCA shall present the action taken on the observations. Meanwhile, the DGCA is commencing action on the observations made during the verbal out-brief given by FAA team and is very confident of addressing all those within the timelines.”

The aviation regulator added: “The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of USA, under its International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA) programme, conducted an audit of DGCA in areas covering aircraft operations, airworthiness and personnel licensing from 16th to 20th July 2018. During the course of the IASA audit, the FAA team was shown regulations including extensive technical guidance in the areas of operations, airworthiness, surveillance and enforcement for the use of safety inspectors of DGCA for carrying out licensing, certification, and approval obligations along with certification records. The training programme provided to the technical officers and inspectors and records therein was also shown to the FAA audit team.”

PTI reported that this was the third audit by the US regulator since 2013, when the FAA had downgraded the safety ranking of the Indian aviation sector and restored it only in 2015.

PTI said the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) had carried out the Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme for India in November 2017 and the audit result showed that the country’s score had declined to 57.44 per cent from 65.82 per cent earlier. The decline was reportedly mainly due to ratings of air traffic controllers being given by the Airports Authority of India (AAI), which is also the provider of air traffic control services. With the falling score, the government had reportedly said it would soon empower the DGCA to regulate air traffic controllers. Government officials had reportedly emphasised that there were no safety concerns for the country’s civil aviation space.

The ICAO is learnt to have told the ministry that there was a need for an independent regulatory oversight by the DGCA on AAI with respect to air traffic controllers, with a senior official reportedly saying that if the ICAO had not taken this aspect into consideration, then India’s score after the audit would have been 71.13 per cent.