Civil aviation minister Ajit Singh has made it clear that the government will not compromise on air safety and will not tolerate any violation on air safety by any airline. “The civil aviation ministry will not tolerate any violation of safety norms. There will be no compromise on air safety,” Mr Ajit Singh told a TV channel.

Asked to comment on the DGCA’s financial audit of scheduled Indian carriers, he said, “The DGCA’s job is to constantly monitor these issues and pull up the airlines if they fail to fulfil these norms.”
Meanwhile, in another development, some of the Indian carriers flying to Europe have already been asked by the European Union (EU) to begin the process of submitting data on the issue of carbon footprints.

The Indian government is drawing up a list of possible retaliatory measures against European carriers if the EU goes ahead with the move to levy, in effect, a carbon tax on Indian carriers flying to Europe.
So far as the issue of financial audit of Indian carriers by the DGCA is concerned, the government had earlier stated, “In the background of reported financial stress experienced by scheduled domestic airlines, DGCA has carried out financial surveillance from safety perspective of these airlines in December, 2011.

Several findings have been noted with respect to backlog of flight crew training, Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA) monitoring, shortage of operational crew, delay in disbursement of salaries etc. CEOs of all these airlines have been called for detailed examination of individual cases. There were apprehensions indicated about Kingfisher Airlines having a number of aircraft on ground for want of engines/spares due to which they were operating a truncated schedule.

“With regard to Air India Express, concern was expressed about some safety issues that remain pending and shortage of training captains. Airlines have been asked to submit their recovery plan with firm time lines next week,” the government had earlier stated.