First woman DGCA Chief to take charge next week

New Delhi: The first woman chief of aviationregulator DGCA M Sathiyavathy is likely to take charge from incumbent Prabhat Kumar early next week, officials said on Thursday. Sathiyavathi, a 1982-batch IAS officer of the UT cadre, was appointed as the Director General of Civil Aviation for three years till 2017. She is likely to take charge on Monday, the officials said.

Kumar, a 1985-batch IAS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre who was appointed in January last year as the DGCA head for three years, would revert to his home cadre.

The top-level change comes at a time when DGCA is faced with a review report of the US regulator Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which had downgraded its safety ranking to Category-II on par with countries like Bangladesh, Barbados, Ghana and Nicaragua. India was till January last year holding the topmost safety ranking Category-I.

Kumar had taken a series of steps and brought in several regulations to enhance aviation safety to resolve the deficiencies pointed out by the FAA. The FAA, which held its third audit of DGCA only last month, is likely to come up with its assessment over India’s safety mechanism by February. Following this, it would decide whether or not to revert India to the top Category-I.

Kumar had initiated several measures and come up with new regulations to enhance safety of air operations. The measures included carrying out surprise checks on airlines, non- scheduled operators and chopper firms to test whether the mandatory safety requirements were being fulfilled by them.

Sathiyavathy, who was appointed as Additional Secretary and Financial Advisor to the Civil Aviation Ministry in February and had served as Puducherry’s chief secretary before that, is due for elevation as Secretary by July. The DGCA chief’s position has so far gone to IAS officers of the rank of Joint Secretary or Additional Secretary.  

The downgrade has hit operations of Indian carriers like Air India and Jet Airways which fly to the US, as their aircraft had to undergo additional safety checks and stringent scrutiny. Till India is not upgraded to Category-I, Indian carriers cannot codeshare with American airlines or expand their operations in the US.

While putting in place several measures to get back the top ranking, Kumar had developed a State Safety Programme (SSP) on aviation safety management, based on the standards and recommended practices of the UN body International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).

As part of this programme of overseeing the implementation of the SSP has been entrusted to the Director General himself. Under the SSP, DGCA has identified seven state safety priorities — like airborne conflict (or mid-air collision), controlled flight into terrain (crash), runway excursions and over-runs, wildlife and bird strikes among others.

All these issues would be directly monitored by the DGCA in the coming years to improve safety of aircraft in the coming years. Apart from all this, Sathiyavathy would also have to deal with the troubles of beleaguered carrier SpiceJet which has truncated its operations significantly due to financial stress.