The Civil Aviation Ministry, in a release on Thursday following the Directorate General of Civil Aviation's (DGCA) meetings with air carriers, said, "With regard to Air India Express, concern was expressed about some safety issues that remain pending, and shortage of training captains.” The release added that airlines had been asked to submit their recovery plans with timelines next week.
The DGCA held separate meetings with the CEOs of each domestic airline to discuss the findings of the audit report and the future course of action. All airlines received a rap on the knuckles, said a highly-placed DGCA official. But it was the meeting held with the officials of Kingfisher Airlines and Air India Express that were the most significant as these two meetings were presided over by the Director General himself, according to a report by The Times of India. An Air India Express spokesperson said the carrier has started addressing the problem of commander shortage in the winter schedule which started in November 2011. “We have 6.6 commanders per aircraft now as compared to the 5.5 commanders per aircraft we had before November. The DGCA will be sending us a formal letter with action points and a timeline for each of them and we will be following it through.” A source said certain safety issues because of its rapid growth was pointed out to IndiGo, including an alleged shortage of training examiner pilots and 35 pilot rest rule violations and not reporting snags to the DGCA. An IndiGo spokesperson, however, denied the allegations. “These 35 FDTL issues occurred over 74,500 flights operated by IndiGo from January to October 2011. It occurred due to unavoidable circumstances such as weather, traffic congestion and flight diversions. Whenever these instances occur, we provide additional rest to the crew to prevent fatigue,” he said.
Click here to see the original article>The DGCA held separate meetings with the CEOs of each domestic airline to discuss the findings of the audit report and the future course of action. All airlines received a rap on the knuckles, said a highly-placed DGCA official. But it was the meeting held with the officials of Kingfisher Airlines and Air India Express that were the most significant as these two meetings were presided over by the Director General himself, according to a report by The Times of India. An Air India Express spokesperson said the carrier has started addressing the problem of commander shortage in the winter schedule which started in November 2011. “We have 6.6 commanders per aircraft now as compared to the 5.5 commanders per aircraft we had before November. The DGCA will be sending us a formal letter with action points and a timeline for each of them and we will be following it through.” A source said certain safety issues because of its rapid growth was pointed out to IndiGo, including an alleged shortage of training examiner pilots and 35 pilot rest rule violations and not reporting snags to the DGCA. An IndiGo spokesperson, however, denied the allegations. “These 35 FDTL issues occurred over 74,500 flights operated by IndiGo from January to October 2011. It occurred due to unavoidable circumstances such as weather, traffic congestion and flight diversions. Whenever these instances occur, we provide additional rest to the crew to prevent fatigue,” he said.