Fake licence: Flying Training Directorate to be strengthened

Facing flak over cases of forgery and bribery in the issuing of pilot licences, the government on Tuesday said it was strengthening the DGCA's Flying Training Directorate by creating nine posts in place of two at present.

Facing flak over cases of forgery and bribery in the issuing of pilot licences, the government on Tuesday said it was strengthening the DGCA's Flying Training Directorate by creating nine posts in place of two at present.

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"The Government has created nine positions in the Flying Training Directorate in addition to one Director, Flying Training," an official release said.

Currently there was one Director (Flying Training) and a Senior Pilot in the Directorate.

The statement acknowledged that the current Senior Pilot "does not have his current rating. However, he is not required to carry out any flight test" but inspect Flying Club records and papers like training log book and fuel registers before allowing renewal of their licences.

The release said in 2009, 11 posts of Flight Operation Inspector (FOIs) were filled up on ad-hoc basis and, at present, there were nine FOIs on the rolls of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

The aviation regulator has been under lot of criticism over the fake pilots issue, in which a senior DGCA officer, seven pilots and three touts have so far been arrested.

DGCA chief E K Bharat Bhushan has favoured a complete revamp of issuing licence to pilots and had called a meeting of all flying schools last week to put together an action plan to tackle the problem of fudging of documents to obtain licences.

He had recently said of the 4,500 Airline Transport Pilot Licences issued, over 1,700 licences have so far been scrutinised and seven of them have turned out to be fake.