NEW DELHI: Amid rising technical glitches in flights mid-air, scheduled airlines have informed the civil aviation regulator DGCA that all stations are now being manned by qualified engineering personnel at all their stations.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in its spot checks conducted on July 18 found that insufficient and unqualified engineering personnel are certifying planes of various carriers before their departure. Before each departure, an aircraft is checked and certified by an aircraft maintenance engineer (AME).
The regulator then asked airlines to deploy sufficient and qualified AME personnel by July 28.
In a statement on Thursday, the regulator said: “Based on reports of increased engineering-related occurrences in scheduled airlines in recent times, DGCA conducted several audit/ spot checks, which indicated improper identification of the cause of a reported defect, increasing trend of MEL (minimum equipment list) releases and insufficient certifying staff.”
The regulator said that in order to address the shortfalls, a series of meetings were held with the airlines wherein they were told to “make available the required type rated certifying staff at all stations” for ensuring that the defects are properly rectified before the aircraft is released for operations.