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Journalism of Courage
MUMBAI, Oct 16: Director General of Civil Aviation H S Khola has expressed concern over regular cases of flight crew members reporting for work after consuming alcohol in India.
Addressing the 10th international conference of the Airlines Association for Management of Human Resources (AAHRM) held at Hotel Juhu Centaur today, Khola said that the crew members are not supposed to board the aircraft if there was a minimum traceable level of alcohol even after the lapse of the mandatory time period of 12 hours after alcohol consumption.
However, the DGCA has been receiving reports of at least one or two such cases every month and imposition of stricter penalties on offenders was being considered, he said.
Describing the offence as a “deliberate error”, Khola said human errors, which account for nearly 80 per cent of all air disasters “should not be condoned but condemned.”
Later speaking to the media, Khola informed that the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), has made the knowledge ofEnglish language mandatory for pilots all over the world.
“Any country which would now issue a licence to a pilot must ensure that the concerned pilot is proficient in English,” Khola said. He added that making the language mandatory for Air Traffic Controllers (ATCs) was also being considered by the UN body.
In another major development, Khola said that as many as 85 out of the 92 foreign airlines flying into the country or overflying Indian airspace have agreed to abide by the DGCA directive to install Aircraft Collision Avoidance System (ACAS) in their aircraft by December 31, 1998. While Jet Airways’ aircraft already have these devices, Air-India and Indian Airlines have assured that they would soon follow suit.
He said the length of runways at airports handling jet aircraft would be increased from the present 6,000 feet to 7,500 feet to provide a “cushion” for the landing aircraft, and also leave a margin for some inadvertent errors.
Khola said safety measures initiated by the DGCA has helpedthe airlines in India to save Rs 100 crore through insurance premium during the last two years.
He said three more secondary surveillance air route radars would be installed at Nagpur, Varanasi and Jharsuguda in Orissa by December 1999 to bring the entire airspace in India under the ATC surveillance. “By the year 2000, all the radars would be inter-linked at these places enabling an ATC in Delhi or Mumbai observe the position of an aircraft in Chennai,” he said. At present the radars are installed at Ahmedabad, Calcutta, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram.
Earlier, Khola highlighted the need for the installation of Minimum Safe Altitude Warning Systems (MSAWS) and Early Ground Proximity Warning Systems (EGPWS) to prevent flight accidents, especially the Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) hazards.
Highlighting the need for stricter adherence to the Standard Operations Procedures (SOPs), Khola said the DGCA from next year would analyse the Digital Flight Data Recorders(DFDRs) of every flight to check whether there is any deviation from operating procedures by the pilots.
The Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) president and CEO, Stuart Matthews, said unless there is a significant reduction in accident rate, the next 15 years will lead to a “scenario where there was one major accident a week somewhere in the world.
“Continuous analysis of the DFDRs combined with confidential and non-punitive reporting especially by pilots can be a very effective means for preventing accidents,” Matthews said.
AAHRM president and Air Mauritius HR director, A K Gujadhur, said airlines should strive to establish a safety work culture right from the level of the CEO to the loader to ensure an unblemished safety track record. “It’s not always the pilots and engineers who are responsible for the accidents, but a faulty corporate policy system and training, improper scheduling, allocation of human resources and examination and analysis of system failures following a disaster can be equallyresponsible for a disaster,” he said.
