NEW DELHI: The civil aviation ministry plans to review functioning of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to ensure that the processes and norms followed by the aviation regulator are uniform and that the public is clear of its mandate.
Among the grey areas is compliance, as it means implementation is left to the interpretation of the officer, which at times creates entry barriers for some and facilitates others. There is also no uniformity over implementation of rules due to lack of any acceptable means of compliance in the DGCA.
Something as simple as an 'airline base' is interpreted differently by two divisions of DGCA. While crew base is an airline base for one, operational base of an airline is the base for the other.
DGCA's decision to call for views from the public on the AirAsia India's flying permit application was another instance of the regulator bringing in a new clause. No airline proposal in the past had to go through such kind of public scrutiny.
"A lot of processes and rules of the DGCA are not very clear. We need to find ways to make them clearer and transparent. A review of the DGCA's process would look into all these issue," a senior ministry official said, adding that the work on the review would begin after the ongoing Parliament session.
While welcoming the move, analysts say neither the ministry nor the DGCA has the wherewithal to rectify the flaws in the processes followed by DGCA.
"All the rules and regulations of the DGCA do not have any acceptable means of compliance, which means that the implementation of any rule depends on the interpretation of the officer one is dealing with. These discretionary powers create entry barriers for many and facilitates some," said Shakti Lumba, former head of operations at Indi-Go.
"DGCA has a lot of CARs (civil aviation requirements) and they have not been reconciled, hence, we have a lot of archaic rules," he added. DGCA monitors the sector through CARs.
This review will be separate from the audit that the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) will conduct on the aviation regulator. FAA had downgraded DGCA to category-II after it found that the Indian aviation regulator did not have enough flight operations inspectors, which, it said, could have compromised aviation safety in the country.
Post the audit, DGCA started the process of hiring fulltime flight operations inspectors. It has since hired 20 of them and is working to hire 15-20 more by end-August.
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