‘Passengers are riding on luck’

How is Indian aviation’s track record with safety standards?

From 2010, many accidents in the Indian aviation sector have been covered up as incidents. That is why Indian aviation’s credibility is very low. Main reasons for increasing accidents are that training standards have come down and the mushrooming of low-cost carriers (LCC). Airlines are trying to expand too fast when they don’t have trained crew. In India, we also have a failure of the regulatory oversight. In India safety oversight is a joke. One of the reasons Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) downgraded us (in February 2014) is that we don’t have correct safety oversight. In 2010, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) team had indicated that for the number of operators and aircraft in India, we need 75 Flight Operations Inspectors. But we had less than 20.

Many hope that replacing the DGCA with the new Civil Aviation Authority will help. Will it?

Who is going to head the Civil Aviation Authority? As per the draft (of the policy that will institute the new Authority), it will be another IAS officer. Our regulations are full of loopholes and the language used is incorrect. Anything that is mandatory should be termed “shall.” Here it says ‘should,’ which gives room for interpretations. The ICAO team in 2010 had suggested that the entire regulation should be changed and the language should be made specific. And one of the suggestions was that India should switch to the EU-OPS (This refers to European Union regulations on safety). We will become a safer nation if we adopt it.

Recent crashes, including the ones involving AirAsia and TransAsia planes, were blamed on adverse weather conditions. How trained are pilots of Indian airlines to handle these conditions?

None of the airlines in India does high altitude upset recovery training for its pilots. An aircraft’s performance at 10,000 feet is completely different from when it is at 40,000 feet. We need additional simulators but we don’t have good instructors. In the US, the Senate brought in a rule that to be an airline co-pilot you need 1,500 hours of flying experience. In India, you need only 200 hours. For a captain, anywhere in the world, you will not be given the command without a minimum of about 2,000 hours of flying on-time. For a wide body aircraft, the requirement is 6,500 hours of flying. In India many airlines have pilots with 2,500 hours as captains.

Another issue with pilots is fatigue. Pilots must have programmed offs. You need an off-day as per the rule. In India, airlines will tell a pilot at night that he is doing a morning flight. If they tell a pilot at 9pm that he has to fly a flight at 6am, where does he get to sleep? In many of the international airlines, you get printed roster for 28 days. A couple of Indian airlines are supposed to have programmed offs but none has a 28-day roster. Sometimes delay of 10 seconds in taking the right decision (while flying) can cost lives.

Many of the airports in India have been modernised. How does the airport infrastructure fare?

Airport infrastructure is very bad. In the Mangalore crash (an Air India Express flight from Dubai crashed in Mangalore airport on May 2010) there were very serious deficiencies in the airport and the facilities there. In the whole report, they blamed the pilot but covered up the failure of other stakeholders. Similarly, in 2010, when we (Ranganathan is a former member of the Civil Aviation Safety Advisory Council) were asked to do the inspection at the Port Blair airport, the tank of the crash tender (truck) ruptured. In the Chennai airport, the rubber remover of the runway is pathetic (rubber from plane tires need to be removed from runways to ensure safe landing). We (passengers) are riding on luck. The audits (of airports) are all a joke.

Do you see FAA upgrading Indian aviation sector anytime soon?

There were hopes that the visit of US President Barack Obama might help. But I don’t think so. The FAA got a rap after the Asiana Airlines flight crashed in San Francisco in 2013. They have to be careful.