India’s Aviation safety rating has been upgraded

1. PROUD MOMENT FOR
INDIA’S CIVILAVIATION

2. India's aviation safety rank upgraded
to Category-1
• The U.S. Federal Aviation Association (FAA)
has upgraded the safety of Indian airlines as
well as of the civil aviation regulator by
granting a Category 1 rating to India under its
International Aviation Safety Assessment
(IASA) programme
• Indian airlines can now increase the number of
flights they operate to the United States

3. India’s Hard Work Finally Pays Off
• The restoration of status comes more than 14 months after it
was downgraded to Category-II following failure of aviation regulator DGCA to
meet the international safety norms
• Announcing the upgrade, US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said
that India has worked hard to get back the status

4. Downgraded in 2014
• India's aviation safety ratings had been downgraded by the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) from the top to the second category which
affected expansion of flights by Indian carriers to the United States
• The downgrade from Category I to II meant that Indian aviation regulator
does not meet the safety standards set by the UN agency, International Civil
Aviation Organisation

5. Why Was It Downgraded?
• The downgrade came in January 2014, as India
could not meet the parameters on two counts —
insufficient number of flight operations inspectors and
lack of required training for airworthiness officers to
handle all types of aircraft
• The downgrade had brought India below Pakistan
and on par with countries like Ghana, Barbados and
Bangladesh after Directorate General of Civil Aviation
(DGCA) failed to meet the ICAO safety standards

6. How did India get back the position?
• Authorities had recruited more flight operations inspectors and
streamlined certain procedures to improve safety
• The upgraded rating is expected to help Jet Airways and state-owned
Air India, the two Indian airlines which currently fly to the United
States

7. Govt to strengthen aviation security,
increase manpower at BCAS
• Government revealed that it is in the process of hiring more
personnel to strengthen civil aviation security in view of increased
threat perception and rising untoward incidents globally
• This proposal to ramp up manpower at the Bureau of Civil Aviation
Security (BCAS), the nodal security agency for the civil aviation
sector, came at a time when carriers are expanding their fleet to
meet rising passenger traffic

8. Routes to the US are vitally important to
Air India and Jet Airways
• It's home to more than 1.5 million Indian Americans - many of
who travel regularly.
• As Modi and Obama governments promote stronger economic
ties - that's lots of business class seats getting filled too
• More broadly - with India's domestic market so competitive
(both Air India and Jet are loss-making) - international routes
are an opportunity to claw back some of those losses
• So having the option to once again look at adding new
destinations, and do deals with more US carriers, can only help
that.

9. What next?
• Fifteen new airports are expected to come up in the next
two to four years
• Also, passenger traffic has shown healthy growth in the
last one to one-and-a-half years