India improved its place within the Worldwide Civil Aviation Group’s (ICAO) security rankings from 102 in 2018 to 48 in 2022. As he will get able to retire because the director normal of civil aviation (DGCA), the aviation ministry’s high bureaucrat Arun Kumar speaks concerning the achievement and the challenges he confronted in his tenure, together with the issue with Pratt & Whitney engines and the protection points regarding Boeing 737 MAX.
Edited excerpts:
India cracked the 50-mark for the primary time in ICAO’s security rating lately; how sturdy is India’s aviation security mechanism and what challenges does it face?
We’re fairly pleased about it (the rating). Sure areas during which we’ve accomplished very properly are: plane operations, air worthiness, even aerodrome. The areas during which we nonetheless are weak and the place there may be sufficient scope for enchancment is plane investigation. The one space which is a matter of concern for everyone is availability of technical manpower. That is an space the place we must always not have scarcity however one way or the other due to our recruitment procedures, and due to our lack of funds, there’s a lack of skilled personnel. However all of this may be improved; we must always now goal to attain 90% and we must always attempt to break into the highest 25 international locations within the ICAO rankings. It should take a couple of years to get to that degree.
How was your tenure because the DG and what would you checklist as your main achievements?
Aviation has been pretty secure right here; we didn’t have many points. Having mentioned that, initially of my tenure because the DG, there was one very severe concern with the engines of Pratt & Whitney (PW). If you happen to recall, two of our main airways with Pratt and Whitney engines, have been growing some snags. We held a number of conferences with the engine maker and plane producer, and obtained all of the faulty engines changed in a sure timebound method. And now, the identical engines are doing properly, with no complaints. We had some points with one of many low-cost carriers, which had a number of snags, upkeep points — this was additionally have been dealt with by us. In current occasions, we’ve had frequent cases of unruly passengers. We got here down closely on them, primarily to make sure that order is restored on either side (passengers and airways). Right now, I’m pleased to tell you that it has improved considerably. After I took cost as a DG, there have been no rules on medication, we had no norms on transgender purposes for pilots, no guidelines for involuntary downgrading of seats and many others.
What was one of the vital essential selections you needed to make?
The Pratt and Whitney concern was a extremely difficult time, as a result of each second day you had an engine failure which was scary. The second choice was the return of B737 MAX plane to service as half the world had lifted the ban. All these have been very troublesome and essential selections that would have gone fallacious, however luckily every thing fell in place. Then once more, after two three months of grounding of plane attributable to Covid, immediately all of the plane have been anticipated to fly. Because of the abrupt hole in operations (in full lockdown), pilots, engineers, air visitors controllers have been rusty, and their coaching needed to be taken care of.
Is there any measure you launched that you simply think about particular?
eGCA (e-Governance of Civil Aviation), which has been an entire sport changer. It’s principally an digital platform on which we work together with our stakeholders. I’m very pleased that it has settled down fairly. However my concluding comment might be that the DGCA must be very skilled and we’ve to be merciless. We will’t be pals with anybody.