Flying training activities won’t slow down due to recent suspension orders, says DGCA

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MUMBAI: The recent suspension orders issued by the civil aviation regulator to flight instructors of five flying training organisations (FTOs) will in no way slow down the training of cadets or cause problems for Commercial Pilot License (CPL) holders wanting to keep their licenses valid, clarified the director general, civil aviation on Monday.
In all the five cases, other instructors have taken on the job responsibilities, earlier handled by the suspended instructors. “The Chief Flight Instructor (CFI) and deputy CFI of Pioneer, Aligarh has been suspended for a period of one year. The FTO continues to be functional as a new CFI has been appointed,” said Arun Kumar, director general, civil aviation.
Similarly the CFI of Madhya Pradesh Flying Club, Indore has been suspended. “They already have 3 more CFI/Dy. CFI,” he said.
The Dy. CFI and CFI of TSAA, Telangana has been suspended. But the school has one more CFI, he said. The FTO approval of SVKM, Shirpur has been suspended for 21 days. It’s a small FTO with only 3 aircraft. Chimes aviation academy’s FTO has been suspended till its runway in Dhana is re-carpeted, which is a routine work which needs to be carried out after years of wear and tear.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) had suspended the FTO approval of Chimes following an inspection which revealed the runway had loose gravel and uneven surface and was unsafe for flying.
In case of Shirpur FTO three of its aircraft was found to have a dysfunctional fuel gauge indicator. D espite that these planes were being operated. “The flying operations at this school has been stopped for three weeks. It will be allowed to operate only when things are in order,” said Kumar.
Following a spate of accidents and incidents involving FTOs in India, the director general ordered a special safety audit of all FTOs, which began on March 21.
The audit had found that in some schools, student pilots were not appropriately briefed and trained on emergencies and essential exercises before being released for solo flights or cross-country flights. In some FTOs the instructors, student pilots and aircraft maintenance engineers were found to have skipped the mandatory breath-analyzer test (BA) test, while in others the BA equipment was not in compliance with the requirements, said the official.
Another violation was false logging. In a few cases dual flight was found to be logged as a solo flight, in other cases the taxi time was calculated towards the instrument flying time of the student pilot, the audit found. Some FTOs were found operating aircraft with faulty fuel gauges, stall warning etc; others had poor emergency response plan with obsolete contact details.



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