New Delhi [India], June 16 (ANI): Director-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Thursday issued a statement regarding Special Safety Audits for all Flying training organizations (FTOs) in India to assess safety standards and systemic deficiencies in operations, maintenance and training.

In the statement, DGCA mentioned that the audit commenced on March 21, 2022. At the time of the audit, there were 32 functional FTOs. Till date, audit of 30 FTOs have been completed.

The audits have brought out safety deficiencies that include non Compliance of DGCA requirements for conduct of Breath-Analyzer (BA) examination i.e, few of the instructors, student pilots and aircraft maintenance engineers did not undergo BA test or submit undertaking prior to commencement of duty/exercise of privileges.

In a few cases, the equipment being used was not in compliance with the requirements or calibrated as required.

It further highlighted that false logging was observed i.e, in a few cases dual flight has been logged as solo flight and a few other cases the taxi time was calculated towards the instrument flying time of the student pilot.

"Operation of aircraft with faulty or unserviceable aircraft instruments such as fuel gauges, stall warning etc. Deficiencies in the ground training of student pilot i.e., overlap of flying training and ground training, lack of arrangement for ground training, not having the required instructors," it says.

Deficiencies in flying training procedures and their implementation i.e., student pilots not appropriately briefed and trained on emergencies/essential exercises before being released for solo flights/cross country, adhocism in the allocation of trainers as trainers are frequently changed and thereby affecting the learning experience of a student pilot, it further reads.

The facilities at the airfield/training organization are not being maintained as per the requirements i.e., runway surface was found worn out, wind sock was found torn or nonstandard.

The emergency response plan was not practised and contained obsolete contact details. The emergency response plan is of great importance when an accident/incident occurs, it reads.

Based on these audit findings in the recent accident, enforcement action has been issued i.e., warning letter to two Accountable Managers, suspension orders to two Certified Flight Instructor (CFI) CFIs for a year, two CFI for 3 months, one Dy.CFI for a year, two Dy.CFI for 3 months, one AFI for 3 months and one student for 3 months. In addition approval of one FTO has been suspended.

Enforcement actions against other individuals/ FTOs are at various stages.

On June 13, a trainee aircraft from the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Uran Akademi (IGRUA) made a forced landing at Fursatganj.

On June 7, a Red Bird flight training organisation (FTO) Tecnam P2008 aircraft had a hard landing on at Baramati runway in Maharashtra.

On June 6, Cessna 152 aircraft VT-EUW of Gati, a pilot training organisation, went out of runway during take-off roll while engaged in a solo circuit and landed at Birasal in Odisha. (ANI)