ICAO to audit India’s aviation safety again


According to a report by Tarun Shukla in Mint, the United Nations’ aviation watchdog has decided to conduct another safety audit of India’s aviation safety this year, in a move that could potentially affect the international expansion plans of new and old Indian airlines. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), of which India is a member, completed an audit of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in 2012 and placed the country in its list of 13 worst-performing nations. This time its audit will perhaps, as a result of the findings of the earlier one, be even more elaborate, said two government officials.

After India addressed some of the issues highlighted by the 2012 audit, it was removed from the list of poor performers. “ICAO operates its safety oversight auditing programme under a Continuous Monitoring Approach. India’s upcoming 2015 audit is simply our next scheduled visit,” Anthony Philbin, spokesperson for ICAO, said. He was replying to a question on why ICAO was headed to India earlier than expected—it had conducted an audit in 2006 and then again in 2012. He did not say if the audit had anything to do with crashes in South East Asia.
While the dates are being worked out, officials in the government are worried. This year’s audit will, apart from safety, also look at aviation security, the two government officials added. “You can imagine how difficult that security test is to pass. Just look at the number of director generals we have removed. We are looking terrible outside,” one of the two added.
US regulator, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) launched its own audit after the findings of ICAO were released, and effected its own downgrade.
The ICAO audit comes at a time when FAA’s is yet to be closed. The agency was to come to India this month to see whether its concerns had been addressed, but will now only do so later. An FAA spokesperson said the agency had no comment to offer on India. Air India Ltd. and Jet Airways (India) Ltd. cannot start flights to new destinations in the US unless FAA upgrades India’s aviation rankings. 

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