New Delhi, December 27
Taking serious note of the trouble that have passengers undergone in the past few days, specially at the hands of the private and low-cost airlines, which have been cancelling flights in the absence of pilots trained to land on the CAT-III-A or CAT-III-B systems in foggy conditions, the government today warned these airlines with severe action, even scrapping of their flights in the next winter schedule.
As there was some semblance of normalcy at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport today with the weather conditions improving, the government, faced with a crisis situation and severe criticism from the passengers on the lack of action against these airlines over the past few days, warned the private and airlines to ensure that their pilots were trained to land and take off on the new landing systems installed at the airport.
The government clearly said that the flight schedules of the private airlines to and from Delhi would be scrapped in the next winter schedule if their pilots were not trained to operate under the new landing system.
“We have told them that they should take necessary steps (including training pilots under the instrument landing system CAT lll-B). If they don’t do so, we may consider not to give them flights in and out of Delhi in the next winter schedule,” Civil Aviation Secretary Ajay Prasad told mediapersons here.
Mr Prasad held meetings with representatives of all airlines this morning along with those from the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and the Airports Authority of India (AAI) in a bid to resolve the crisis situation.
The situation had become worse as the private airlines refused to look after their passengers in the event of cancellation of flights.
Of all airlines operating in the country, just international carriers and some pilots from the public sector Indian (Airlines) and Air-India have been trained to take off and land on the CAT-III-A and CAT-III-B systems.
Keeping in view the weather conditions prevailing during early morning and late night hours, these airlines have only been using the services of these pilots to ensure that their flight schedules are not affected.
The warning from Mr Prasad came after various airlines pointed out that training pilots at “very high costs” on the CAT-III B system for a short period of two-three weeks was not a commercially viable proposition for them.
Noting that only Indian (erstwhile Indian Airlines) and Air-India had CAT-III B enabled pilots, Mr Prasad said if the private carriers were “not ready to operate this instrument landing system in the next one year, they should not operate flights from Delhi during this period.”
Observing that it was not necessary to have the entire pilot strength to be trained on CAT-III B, he said the airlines could decide on training only that number of pilots as required to operate flights out of North Indian airports during this period.
Indian had 90 pilots trained to operate on such systems and had steadily been increasing this number over the years.
Acknowledging that steps to meet the fog situation as finalised at meetings earlier were not taken by the airlines and other concerned agencies at the airports, Mr Prasad said this would have met the needs of the stranded passengers to a large extent.
Meanwhile, experts here sought upgradation of aviation rules by the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) by drawing lessons from the aviation authorities in the US and other regions to take advantage of modern technologies installed in new-generation aircraft.
Besides the cost component in training pilots, the prevailing Civil Aviation Requirements (CARs), which are rules set by the DGCA guiding all aviation-related activities, would imply that the new and upcoming airlines would take at least three to four years to be authorised to operate CAT-III B, aviation experts said.
