The global aviation industry has been thrown into turmoil by the second crash, in similar circumstances, of a Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft in five months. The new generation aircraft, belonging to Ethiopian Airlines, went down six minutes after take-off on Sunday, killing 157 people aboard, and prompted aviation regulators globally to press panic buttons. One after another, the UK, France Germany, China, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and a score of other countries grounded the plane and also banned its flights in their airspace. India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) was initially slow to respond but late Tuesday ordered the MAX planes out of the skies. The planes still are flying in the US where the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) insists the aircraft’s safe. Southwest Airlines, United Airlines and American Airlines all operate the 737 MAX 8. Southwest Airlines alone has 34 MAX 8 planes in its fleet. Canada has followed the FAA’s lead but the decision by other countries to ground their Max fleets seriously undercuts authority of the agency, long considered the last word on aviation safety. Significantly, China — which has 96 MAX 8s — was the first big nation to ground the new planes, fearing a link between Indonesia’s Lion Air MAX crash that killed 189 and Sunday’s disaster.
The Max grounding comes at a difficult time for both India’s civil aviation industry and the DGCA. SpiceJet, which flies 12 MAX 8 planes, was worst hit by the temporary ban. Jet Airways has five but these were already grounded due to financial woes. India is on its way to becoming the world’s second-largest civil aviation industry, having grown by some 20 per cent annually for the last four years. In mid-2018, the scheduled airlines had 500 planes flying regularly and around 125 are expected to be added in 2019. Inevitably, the DGCA’s struggling to keep up with its obligations to train and licence air traffic controllers and flight operation inspectors. The DGCA has also been slow to modernise its equipment and enhance its skills.
The difficulties faced by India’s aviation industry and its regulator, have not gone unnoticed around the world. India has scored poorly in the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO) Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme and, as a result, the FAA has twice conducted audits and downgraded Indian airports to a Category 2 safety ranking, putting it alongside countries like Bangladesh, Ghana and Nicaragua. Also last year the regulator reacted slowly when faced with safety incidents over the Airbus 320neo planes powered by Pratt & Whitney engines. Planes with these engines, which failed multiple times, were only grounded after a public outcry. With India set to become the world’s third biggest aviation market within the next four years, both industry players and the regulatory authorities have to scale up their safety-related capabilities. The DGCA, in particular, has to sharply expand its capacity to ensure the implementation of safety and regulatory norms by all stakeholders. Growth cannot be at the expense of safety.