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The US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) has restored Category I status to India’s aviation safety oversight mechanism, fourteen months after it had downgraded the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
With this, Indian carriers like Air India and Jet Airways can go ahead with their plans to increase flights to the United States.
The US FAA informed the DGCA about the move in a letter to the regulator and the civil aviation ministry on Wednesday: “In consideration of the FAA’s determination based on the corrective actions taken by the DGCA to date, the IASA category for India shall be immediately upgraded to Category I …”
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US transportation secretary Anthony Foxx informed civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju Pusapati about the upgrade by FAA.
“This meeting (between Foxx and Raju) succeeded the series of meetings held by US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi … to identify areas in which partnership, technical cooperation and ‘Make in India’ can be developed,” the aviation ministry said in a statement.
Analysts said that the government needs to continuously work to ensure better functioning of the DGCA.
“DGCA needs continuous improvement in its systems, processes, manpower, training and transparency. Its financial and operational independence has to be enhanced. It has to improve its transparency and ease of doing business with industry. The industry hopes that the Category 1 upgrade should lead to further reforms. And soon,” said Amber Dubey, partner and India head of aerospace and defence at global consultancy KPMG.
A team of officials from the US FAA concluded a two-day review of India’s aviation safety oversight mechanism on March 31, to review the progress on findings indicated after an audit done in December last year. Subsequently, India has now been upgraded to Category I status.
The FAA had downgraded India to Category II status in safety oversight capability in January last year on two key concerns — lack of training of its officials and lack of full-time flight operations inspectors (FOIs) on DGCA’s rolls.
The downgrade meant that no Indian airline could launch any additional flights to the US and the existing flights to America could be subjected to more checks which could lead to delays.
While the downgrade did not mean that Indian airlines were unsafe, it showed that the FAA’s Indian counterpart — the DGCA — was not adequately equipped to properly monitor the safety performance of Indian carriers.
The downgrade additionally barred Indian airlines from code-sharing with their American counterparts.
