Restoration of Honour

The year 2014 was ushered in with a real shocker for the Indian civil aviation establishment when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of the United States of America (USA) downgraded India’s aviation safety ranking from Category I to Category II. India had achieved Category I status in August 1997, soon after the first wave of resurgence in the Indian airline industry had begun. Contrary to the general belief or impression, the decision by the FAA to downgrade India’s safety ranking, was not in retaliation to steps taken by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs against the US diplomatic community in India in the wake of the ugly episode in the US involving the Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade. In fact, the decision by the FAA to downgrade India from Category I to II was taken after two safety audits carried out in September and December 2013.

The FAA routinely carries out safety rating assessments of the civil aviation regulatory agencies of all those countries in the world whose airliners and other civil aircraft operate to or through the USA. This exercise is undertaken under the International Aviation Safety Assessment Program (IASA) of the FAA. There are only two categories that the FAA has stipulated to classify the aviation safety rating of nations. Category I is a certification by the FAA that the civil aviation regulatory authority of the nation is fully compliant with the safety standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), an agency under the United Nations. Those nations that do not come up to the laid down safety standards, are placed in Category II. As a result of the downgrade in January 2014, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) of India found itself in the company of nations such as Ghana, Barbados, Bangladesh Indonesia, Serbia and the Philippines who figured in the list of Category II at the end of the year 2013. What must have been more traumatic as well as embarrassing for the Indian civil aviation establishment was that even Pakistan had been placed in Category I. Nothing could have been more humiliating!

Apart from the fact that the Indian civil aviation establishment found the decision by the FAA to be both surprising and disappointing, it was the group of Indian carriers that had to bear the brunt of this decision as they were debarred from entering any new codeshare agreement with any of the airlines in the US. Effectively, Air India and Jet Airways were unable to increase the number of flights to the US from the existing level. Also, aircraft with Indian registration were required to go through more engineering and other safety checks while operating through the US resulting in problems for the airline management as well as inconvenience to passengers. The overall impact on international operations by the civil aircraft registered in India was therefore, adverse. More importantly, it was the prestige of the nation on the global scene that was at stake.

The problem lay essentially in the fact that both the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the DGCA focused more on the commercial aspects of civil aviation and less on safety. As pointed out by the FAA, the DGCA was found lacking in procedural aspects, technical expertise, trained flight inspectors and proper documentation. However, the downgrade by FAA in the beginning of 2014, jolted the Indian civil aviation establishment out of its state of slumber as a result of which the latter set about in right earnest to correct the unhealthy drift that had set in. Since then the Indian civil aviation regulator the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has been taking significant steps to address the concerns which primarily centred around its lack of technical staff and procedures. While the DGCA along with the Ministry of Civil Aviation worked relentlessly since the downgrade in January 2014, indications from the FAA was that restoration was unlikely to be done in a hurry and that it would take time. FAA would also have to coordinate with the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), the aviation regulator in Europe, in this regard. It took four years for Israel and seven years for the Phillipines to regain Category I. However, in December 2014, the FAA initiated reassessment of the Indian DGCA to check for compliance with the standards laid down by the ICAO.

Finally, after the process of scrutiny that lasted for three months, on April 8, 2015, 14 months after the downgrade, the FAA restored aviation safety ranking of the Indian aviation regulator, the DGCA, to Category-1, much to the relief of the Indian civil aviation industry and the nation at large.