ICAO carries out aviation safety audit for India

The International Civil Aviation Organisation, the UN aviation watchdog, has concluded its audit of the country's aviation sector and according to preliminary feedback it was "satisfied" with the regulatory mechanism, the government stated in a release on Friday.

A five-member audit team of the ICAO carried out audit in areas of personal licensing, airworthiness, operations, legislation and organisation in India from 6 to 16 November, as part of its universal safety oversight audit programme, according to the release issued by the civil aviation ministry.

The audit involved verification of response provided by DGCA against protocol questions made available by ICAO. The verification process involved checking documentary evidence, perusal of relevant files, discussions with relevant officers and industry visits.

The ICAO teams visited Chennai, Mumbai and CATC (Allahabad) to ascertain the implementation of safety related procedures as per regulations laid down by DGCA in line with ICAO annexes/documents.

As per preliminary feedback, the audit team was satisfied with the safety system put in place by the safety regulator. As per procedure laid down by ICAO, the audit team presents its report to the headquarter team and draft report is made available to the state in about 90 days.

The state is required to provide its comment and draw its action plan on various aspects of the report and make it available to ICAO within 45 days.

Thereafter the report will be finalised and made available to member states.