MUMBAI/NEW DELHI: The Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the agency tasked with regulating air travel across the country, has destroyed most records relating to mishaps before 2010, raising fears that safety issues in the accident-prone sector are being taken lightly.
At least three senior officials of the DGCA told ET that accounts of what they call "minor incidents" such as recall of an aircraft in mid-flight, or the sudden opening of a door in mid-air, have been destroyed as the agency does not consider them important.
Incidents that happen on ground like wings of two aircraft brushing against each other are often ignored and no records are maintained, they added.
DGCA officials said this has been the policy since 2007 and only records of serious accidents are kept for three to four years.
Minor incidents, they insist, have no shelf life. But the disclosure, coming on the heels of a spate of alarming incidents over Indian skies in recent weeks, has shocked many safety and aviation experts who have slammed the DGCA for their casual approach.
"If they are destroying these records, it is a very serious. Safety records must be kept for any number of years as any incident is a source of learning. It is a poor decision and whoever has initiated such exercise must be held accountable and a lower-rung officer cannot decide on these matters," said Mohan Ranganathan, a well-known air safety and aviation expert in Chennai.
Across the world, aviation regulators tend to maintain records of all safety-related issues for a much longer period, say 10-15 years.
Such records could be important as they provide valuable data for future reference apart from revealing the inefficiencies and lapses of a system working under tremendous stress.
DG DENIES NEGATIVE APPROACH
For instance, in India in 2007, DGCA technicians observed that the A320 aircraft was malfunctioning repeatedly. A detailed analysis of a few incidents revealed a lacuna in the hydraulic system and Airbus fixed the problem after it was brought to its notice.
Experts say planning for safety cannot happen without access to past incidents, however minor they may have been. "There is no scope for dismissing any incident, however minor it is in aviation," said a former director general.
Bharat Bhushan, the director-general of civil aviation, denied any negative approach towards safety. "Nothing is being destroyed. We are moving towards automation and paperless office at the DGCA, under this a lot of initiatives are being taken," he told ET on Sunday over phone.
Bir Singh Rai, the deputy director-general, directorate of air safety, declined comment, saying the director, civil aviation, should respond to these issues. But in a damning incident a couple of months ago, Rai let the cat out of the bag when he told a journalist from the website of a Malaysian newspaper, The Star, that government safety records "prior to the year 2010 have been destroyed".
Rai was responding to an RTI request by Rick Westhead, the Star journalist, on the number of safety mishaps in the aviation sector. Westhead wrote in an article on the Star website that Rai had made the declaration in a letter to him.
Though Rai later clarified that only paper records had been destroyed and that electronic records were still being maintained, the damage had been done. Rai rubbished the report. "What the foreign journalist is saying is not correct, whatever he said and quoted me on is also not correct. It must be a misconception," he told ET.
Growth in India's aviation sector has surged in recent years, but safety measures have lagged behind. There have been two serious incidents in the past 15 days and seven emergency landings, of which six involved national carrier Air India.
There have been at least two instances of planes skidding off runways due to wet surfaces.Bhushan said he does not overlook the incidents, but these issues emerge when there is exponential growth. "That is no argument. Only people on the defensive would give that kind of an argument," he said.
Some experts point out that there could be other reasons for the destruction. The country's regulator had lobbied hard in 2009 to avoid a Federal Aviation Administration downgrade of India from a Category I to Category II nation (rubbing shoulders with the likes of Ghana and Afghanistan) as the sector was found wanting according to the safety guidelines of the International Civil Aviation Organisation.
A detailed record of every mishap (at least 1,000 of them occur across the country every year, one official said) would show India in bad light and make a downgrade a distinct possibility. FAA is the US regulator and its downgrade would have hurt Air India and Jet Airways by making it difficult for them to operate and expand in that country.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com
At least three senior officials of the DGCA told ET that accounts of what they call "minor incidents" such as recall of an aircraft in mid-flight, or the sudden opening of a door in mid-air, have been destroyed as the agency does not consider them important.
Incidents that happen on ground like wings of two aircraft brushing against each other are often ignored and no records are maintained, they added.
DGCA officials said this has been the policy since 2007 and only records of serious accidents are kept for three to four years.
Minor incidents, they insist, have no shelf life. But the disclosure, coming on the heels of a spate of alarming incidents over Indian skies in recent weeks, has shocked many safety and aviation experts who have slammed the DGCA for their casual approach.
"If they are destroying these records, it is a very serious. Safety records must be kept for any number of years as any incident is a source of learning. It is a poor decision and whoever has initiated such exercise must be held accountable and a lower-rung officer cannot decide on these matters," said Mohan Ranganathan, a well-known air safety and aviation expert in Chennai.
Across the world, aviation regulators tend to maintain records of all safety-related issues for a much longer period, say 10-15 years.
Such records could be important as they provide valuable data for future reference apart from revealing the inefficiencies and lapses of a system working under tremendous stress.
DG DENIES NEGATIVE APPROACH
For instance, in India in 2007, DGCA technicians observed that the A320 aircraft was malfunctioning repeatedly. A detailed analysis of a few incidents revealed a lacuna in the hydraulic system and Airbus fixed the problem after it was brought to its notice.
Experts say planning for safety cannot happen without access to past incidents, however minor they may have been. "There is no scope for dismissing any incident, however minor it is in aviation," said a former director general.
Bharat Bhushan, the director-general of civil aviation, denied any negative approach towards safety. "Nothing is being destroyed. We are moving towards automation and paperless office at the DGCA, under this a lot of initiatives are being taken," he told ET on Sunday over phone.
Bir Singh Rai, the deputy director-general, directorate of air safety, declined comment, saying the director, civil aviation, should respond to these issues. But in a damning incident a couple of months ago, Rai let the cat out of the bag when he told a journalist from the website of a Malaysian newspaper, The Star, that government safety records "prior to the year 2010 have been destroyed".
Rai was responding to an RTI request by Rick Westhead, the Star journalist, on the number of safety mishaps in the aviation sector. Westhead wrote in an article on the Star website that Rai had made the declaration in a letter to him.
Though Rai later clarified that only paper records had been destroyed and that electronic records were still being maintained, the damage had been done. Rai rubbished the report. "What the foreign journalist is saying is not correct, whatever he said and quoted me on is also not correct. It must be a misconception," he told ET.
Growth in India's aviation sector has surged in recent years, but safety measures have lagged behind. There have been two serious incidents in the past 15 days and seven emergency landings, of which six involved national carrier Air India.
There have been at least two instances of planes skidding off runways due to wet surfaces.Bhushan said he does not overlook the incidents, but these issues emerge when there is exponential growth. "That is no argument. Only people on the defensive would give that kind of an argument," he said.
Some experts point out that there could be other reasons for the destruction. The country's regulator had lobbied hard in 2009 to avoid a Federal Aviation Administration downgrade of India from a Category I to Category II nation (rubbing shoulders with the likes of Ghana and Afghanistan) as the sector was found wanting according to the safety guidelines of the International Civil Aviation Organisation.
A detailed record of every mishap (at least 1,000 of them occur across the country every year, one official said) would show India in bad light and make a downgrade a distinct possibility. FAA is the US regulator and its downgrade would have hurt Air India and Jet Airways by making it difficult for them to operate and expand in that country.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com
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