NEW DELHI: Days after the Kozhikode air crash incident, the aviation regulator has started a special safety audit of all airlines. A senior DGCA official said it will be a complete FOQA (Flight Operations Quality Assurance) audit. It is the process of obtaining and analysing all kinds of data from flights to improve efficiency of flight operations.
“All Indian airlines will undergo the special safety audit that has begun. In the first phase, we are auditing SpiceJet and Air India,” the official said. Earlier, the DGCA had initiated special safety audit of all airports in India that receive heavy rain during.
The Airports Authority of India (AAI) manages more than 100 airports in the country, including the one in Kozhikode. However, major airports like Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad are managed by private companies. Variation aviation authorities including the regulator have received flaks from various aviation experts particularly after the recent air accident which killed at least 18 people for alleged lax approach towards safety measures.
On August 7, a B737NG aircraft of Air India Express with 190 people on board overshot the runway and crashed at the Kozhikode airport amid heavy rain, killing 18 people, including the pilots. Air India Express is a wholly owned subsidiary of national carrier Air India.
The two leading pilot unions of Air India on August 13 had sought a meeting with Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri to discuss matters related to working conditions and flight safety. “Our pilots are constantly facing the challenges of COVID-19, monsoon weather, ill-designed flight duty time limitations (FDTL), several extensions and dispensations given by the DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation),” stated the August 13 letter written to Puri by the Indian Commercial Pilots’’ Association (ICPA) and Indian Pilots’’ Guild (IPG). The two unions said they were writing on behalf of pilots of Air India and its subsidiaries.