The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has suspended the Chief of Flight Safety at Air India for a period of 1 month after it found lapses in the accident prevention work carried out by the airline.
The DGCA team carried out surveillance of Air India on July 25 and 26 in the areas of internal audit, accident prevention work and availability of required technical manpower. These checks were carried out as per the flight safety manual and requirements of civil aviation, the DGCA said in a statement.
“Further it was observed that some of the internal audit/spot checks claimed to be carried out by the airline were done in a perfunctory manner and not as per the regulatory requirements. DGCA, after reviewing the action taken report submitted by the airline, issued show cause notices to the concerned post holders,” it said.
Air India has been directed not to assign any audits, surveillance, spot checks pertaining to compliance of DGCA to the particular auditor, whose inspections indicate lack of diligence, it said.
“Further the approval of Chief of Flight Safety of M/s Air India has been suspended for a period of one month for the lapses established,” it added.
This suspension comes after the regulatory body found lapses in the airline’s internal audit. The DGCA had said in August that a two-member body had raised a host of serious concerns. “A two-member inspection team of the DGCA has found lapses in internal safety audits of Air India. The findings of the surveillance team have raised a host of serious concerns and are being looked into further," said the regulator last month.
The DGCA had carried out random inspections of 13 safety points but found that the airline prepared false reports in all 13 cases, the inspection report submitted to the DGCA had stated.
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