PROUD MOMENT FOR INDIA’S CIVIL AVIATION

India's aviation safety rank upgraded to Category-1 The U.S. Federal Aviation Association (FAA) has upgraded the safety of Indian airlines as well as of the civil aviation regulator by granting a Category 1 rating to India under its International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA) programme Indian airlines can now increase the number of flights they operate to the United States

India’s Hard Work Finally Pays Off The restoration of status comes more than 14 months after it was downgraded to Category-II following failure of aviation regulator DGCA to meet the international safety norms Announcing the upgrade, US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said that India has worked hard to get back the status

Downgraded in 2014 India's aviation safety ratings had been downgraded by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) from the top to the second category which affected expansion of flights by Indian carriers to the United States The downgrade from Category I to II meant that Indian aviation regulator does not meet the safety standards set by the UN agency, International Civil Aviation Organisation

Why Was It Downgraded? The downgrade came in January 2014, as India could not meet the parameters on two counts — insufficient number of flight operations inspectors and lack of required training for airworthiness officers to handle all types of aircraft The downgrade had brought India below Pakistan and on par with countries like Ghana, Barbados and Bangladesh after Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) failed to meet the ICAO safety standards

How did India get back the position? Authorities had recruited more flight operations inspectors and streamlined certain procedures to improve safety The upgraded rating is expected to help Jet Airways and state-owned Air India, the two Indian airlines which currently fly to the United States

Govt to strengthen aviation security, increase manpower at BCAS Government revealed that it is in the process of hiring more personnel to strengthen civil aviation security in view of increased threat perception and rising untoward incidents globally This proposal to ramp up manpower at the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), the nodal security agency for the civil aviation sector, came at a time when carriers are expanding their fleet to meet rising passenger traffic

Routes to the US are vitally important to Air India and Jet Airways It's home to more than 1.5 million Indian Americans - many of who travel regularly. As Modi and Obama governments promote stronger economic ties - that's lots of business class seats getting filled too More broadly - with India's domestic market so competitive (both Air India and Jet are loss-making) - international routes are an opportunity to claw back some of those losses So having the option to once again look at adding new destinations, and do deals with more US carriers, can only help that.

What next? Fifteen new airports are expected to come up in the next two to four years Also, passenger traffic has shown healthy growth in the last one to one-and-a-half years