This means investigations into air mishaps would be separate from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) which is now both investigator and aviation regulator.
Disclosing this here, Naseem Zaidi, director general of DGCA, said the CAA would be established through legislation shortly. He was addressing the International Workshop on Global Aviation Safety Roadmap, organised by the Delhi branch of Aeronautical Society of India. Zaidi, maintaining that the CAA would be set up in accordance with the recommendations of the International Civil Aviation Organisation. He said the authority would ensure effective regulatory functions and be established in the line of similar global bodies like the Federal Aviation Administration of the USA.
Noting that India complied with the most of the recent standards of ICAO, he said the DGCA was undergoing a restructuring and strengthening process adding 550 technical positions. India was legislating upon ICAO Manual’s Annexe-13 relating to the Standard and Recommended Practice (SARPs) to ensure incident reporting and sharing of global data reporting system.
A legislative proposal to protect safety data with the purpose of accident prevention is also under examination, he said adding that India was cooperating with the FAA and other safety bodies for sharing of information of accidents and air incidents.
Zaidi disclosed that to ensure complete transparency, the DGCA will now publish full accident/incident reports on its website while all available reports were currently being uploaded on the website. “We are going to demonstrate our commitment to safety in the follow up visits of the FAA (delegation) in July,” he said.
Inaugurating the workshop, Civil Aviation secretary M Madhavan Nambiar said while air travel was already the “safest form of transportation”, the challenge for the aviation industry and regulatory agencies was “to make an already safe system safer”.
He said there was a great need for all the stakeholders, including the government, airlines and airport operators, the regulators and others to work together, adopt the best international practices and make all aviation systems as safe as possible.