The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) is set to complete the second safety audit of all airlines by next month. The last such audit was conducted in November,2011 to ascertain the impact on safety on account of bad financial health of the airlines. We started with Kingfisher Airlines and Air India Express first because of the staff shortage that held us from doing an audit of all of them in one go. We have to complete the audit of all other airlines by October, said a senior DGCA official. He said that the audit reports of Kingfisher and Air India Express would be out in a day or two. The earlier audit had found that stress due to non-payment of salaries to engineers and pilots risked the safety of flight. he risk was more in case of engineers,who are in the job of servicing planes during late night hours. Non-payment of salaries were found in Kingfisher Airlines,Air India and Air India Express. In the case of AI Express,it was also found that the duty sheet for pilots were not computerised but made manually. The airline is operating with a pilot shortage of 200 and had to curtail its operations due to the strike at Air India. Since the earlier audit,the aviation sector showed an improvement in its financial condition. However,Kingfisher,is yet to improve its finances. Meanwhile,the aviation ministry had also asked the DGCA to remove financial word from the title Assessment of Impact of Financial Stress on Safety of Operations of the Civil Aviation Requirement (CAR). A CAR is a guideline which lays down requirements for aviation in the country and how an airline will be judged on a particular parameter.
