The Indian air regulatory body promotes financial and personnel autonomy similar to counterparts in Europe, the UK and the US, as it seeks to strengthen supervision and keep step with the requirements of the flourishing air transport sector.
The General Directorate for Civil Aviation, or DGCA, wants the power to accept independently and offer competing salaries to attract qualified experts, people familiar with this matter and ask not to be identified with the quotation of the rules. They also stated that they were looking for increased financing to support a regular educational program for their employees.
The demand for autonomy underlines the evaluation of the regulator that it needs to blame and strengthen the supervision of the third largest market for domestic aviation in the world. Any capacity also reduces DGCA that it increases concerns about its ability to ensure security-staff reinforced after the recent Air India crash, which killed everyone except one passenger and triggered the audit throughout the system.
Currently, the Indian regulator is working with limited labor sources and financing, a fraction of what its global peers receive.
Since July, DGCA filled only 553 out of 1,063 technical contributions and employed 4,295 air traffic administrators, people said. On the other hand, the US Federal Air Administration has 46,170 employees, of which 14,000 controllers and 7,000 security inspectors.
In the year 31. March DGCA was assigned only $ 38 million, compared to the FAA of $ 23.1 billion in the fiscal year of 2024, they added. The European Union security agency, or the EASA allocation from 2024, was eight times from its Indian counterparts, while the British Civil Aviation Authority gained the current DGCA allocation almost six times, people said.
The Ministry of Aviation DGCA and India did not answer requests for comments.
Unlike DGCA, which operates under the Indian Ministry of Civil Aviation, CAA and EASA are independent bodies, people said. FAA, under the US Ministry of Transport, has relatively limited autonomy, they said.
The Indian Air Sector has continued to grow permanently over the last decade, while the number of passengers has more than doubled to 234 million out of 116 million and the size of the aircraft fleet grew by more than 100% to 841.
Increasing workload
Indian carriers ordered more than 1,300 aircraft – one of the largest order books from any country – and indicated that the workload of the regulatory body would increase in the coming years.
The Indian aviation regulator also lacks a formal educational module and the limitation of funding prevented efforts to develop specialized programs in cooperation with domestic and international institutions.
This led to the challenges of deploying qualified inspectors across the country, especially for some types of aircraft located in regions without trained staff, people said.
(Tagstotranslate) India Aviation Regulator (T) DGCA Autonomy (T) Aviation Travel Sector (T) Safety Concerns (T) Air Industry Growth (T) DGCA POWER (T) DGCA Financial Authority
