How safe, Indian aviation?

Today, the Hindustan Times published an article titled India’s air safety rating could fall after AI crew complain. What they have said, is that the All India Cabin Crew Association has written to the ICAO, complaining about insufficient cabin crew and non-compliance of norms regarding crew operation timings, among other things. Apparently they had reported this earlier to the Director General of Civil Aviation (the aviation regulator in India, but there was no response).

The Association represents Air India pilots, who may have enough bones to pick with the airline. There is also an FAA (US) audit expected to commence in early September 2013, which may also explain the timing of this complaint by the Association to the ICAO. Given all of this, I believe there may be more than meets the eye as regards this complaint, and so it would be too early to offer any comments.

On a related note, three Asian airports - SIN, HKG and DPS (Bali) - have banned Indian chartered flights from landing at their airports. Apparently, this is on account of concerns around their safety norms. This was reported earlier this week in many newspapers, but you can refer to this news article in the Mumbai Mirror.

The same article also reports that Japan has banned Air India's Dreamliners from landing at any Japanese airports, due to concerns around safety, particularly relating to modifications made to the equipment. Apparently, AI has not provided (is that a euphemism for "refused to provide"?) these details, pending which the landing rights have been withdrawn as of now. Good news, if you can call it that, is that AI may have plans on the anvil for operating Dreamliners on their DEL-NRT route.

My take

AI does indeed have concerns that it needs to address, regarding safety. There's no denying that. There is also enough unrest amongst crew, including one issue about pay and resourcing discrepancies between Air India and the former Indian Airlines pilots and cabin crew. Having said that, the Association's complaints that I've written about above, may well be motivated by other incentives. Can't put anything past these guys!

However, according to this article in Live Mint, the ICAO, which had ranked India among 13 nations with the worst record for air safety oversight, may remove the country from its blacklist after a week-long compliance audit of the Indian aviation regulator this week, according to the regulator. ICAO had earlier clubbed India with 12 other nations including Angola, Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Kazakhstan and Lebanon on account of air safety oversight. The Economic Times also reports this here.

Lets see what the FAA audit throws out!