Enough scope for improvement in aircraft investigation: DGCA chief Arun Kumar

Top bureaucrat Arun Kumar speaks about the achievement and challenges he faced in his tenure, including the problem with Pratt & Whitney engines & safety issues concerning Boeing 737 MAX

India improved its position in the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) safety rankings from 102 in 2018 to 48 in 2022. As he gets ready to retire as the director general of civil aviation (DGCA), the aviation ministry’s top bureaucrat Arun Kumar speaks about the achievement and the challenges he faced in his tenure, including the problem with Pratt & Whitney engines and the safety issues concerning Boeing 737 MAX.

The DGCA chief called eGCA (e-Governance of Civil Aviation) a complete game changer in his tenure. (HT sourced image)

Edited excerpts:

India cracked the 50-mark for the first time in ICAO’s safety ranking recently; how robust is India’s aviation safety mechanism and what challenges does it face?

We are reasonably happy about it (the ranking). Certain areas in which we have done very well are: aircraft operations, air worthiness, even aerodrome. The areas in which we still are weak and where there is enough scope for improvement is aircraft investigation. The one area which is a matter of concern for everybody is availability of technical manpower. This is an area where we should not have shortage but somehow because of our recruitment procedures, and because of our lack of budget, there is a lack of trained personnel. But all of this can be improved; we should now target to score 90% and we should try to break into the top 25 countries in the ICAO rankings. It will take a few years to get to that level.

How was your tenure as the DG and what would you list as your major achievements?

Aviation has been fairly safe here; we didn’t have many issues. Having said that, at the start of my tenure as the DG, there was one very serious issue with the engines of Pratt & Whitney (PW). If you recall, two of our major airlines with Pratt and Whitney engines, were developing some snags. We held a lot of meetings with the engine maker and aircraft manufacturer, and got all the defective engines replaced in a certain timebound manner. And now, the same engines are doing well, with no complaints. We had some issues with one of the low-cost carriers, which had a lot of snags, maintenance issues --- this was also were handled by us. In recent times, we have had frequent instances of unruly passengers. We came down heavily on them, primarily to ensure that order is restored on both sides (passengers and airlines). Today, I’m happy to inform you that it has improved significantly. When I took charge as a DG, there were no regulations on drugs, we had no norms on transgender applications for pilots, no rules for involuntary downgrading of seats etc.

What was one of the most crucial decisions you had to make?

The Pratt and Whitney issue was a really challenging time, because every second day you had an engine failure which was scary. The second decision was the return of B737 MAX aircraft to service as half the world had lifted the ban. All these were very difficult and crucial decisions that could have gone wrong, but fortunately everything fell in place. Then again, after two three months of grounding of aircraft due to Covid, suddenly all the aircraft were expected to fly. Due to the abrupt gap in operations (in complete lockdown), pilots, engineers, air traffic controllers were rusty, and their training had to be taken care of.

Is there any measure you introduced that you consider special?

eGCA (e-Governance of Civil Aviation), which has been a complete game changer. It is basically an electronic platform on which we interact with our stakeholders. I’m very happy that it has settled down reasonably. But my concluding remark will be that the DGCA has to be very professional and we have to be cruel. We can’t be friends with anyone.