Question : Staff Strength in FAA

(a) whether Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) has downgraded the safety of civil aviation due to the lack of trained technical staff at Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and precarious shortfall of Flight Operating Inspectors (FOI) in the DGCA''s pay roll and if so, the details thereof including the actual sanctioned strength and the present strength of FOIs as on date;

(b) the details of FOIs on the payroll of DGCA and status of remaining FOIs not on the payroll of DGCA along with their method of payment;

(c) whether the Government is having any proposal to recruit FOIs to fulfill the norms prescribed by the FAA; and

(d) if so, the details thereof?

The Minister of State (IC) in the Ministry of CIVIL AVIATION
(Shri Hardeep Singh Puri)

(a) to (d) No Sir. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) last conducted an International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA) audit of Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in July 2018 to see India''s continued adherence to the standards of the Chicago Convention and its Annexes for civil aviation safety oversight and confirmed that India meets relevant requirements for aviation safety oversight. The audit confirmed India''s rating of Category 1. However, FAA, during previous audit in September 2013 had placed India under Category 2 rating in early 2014 due to inadequate procedures and lack of sufficient number of regular Flight Operations Inspectors (FOIs) in DGCA. In order to fulfil the audit observations, 75 posts of FOIs were created in the year 2014 by way of restructuring and strengthening of Flight Standards Directorate, DGCA and subsequently based on action taken by DGCA to address the shortcomings, Category 1 status of India was restored in April 2015. At present, 47 FOIs are on contract with DGCA. The recruitment against vacancies is a continuous process. DGCA has recently notified residual vacancies for FOIs inviting applications from eligible candidates.;

Presently, FOIs are engaged on contract basis in DGCA, with a fixed monthly remuneration as provided for in the specific terms and conditions of their contracts which meets the requirements of FAA.