New Delhi

The Indian civil aviation regulator has suspended the chief of flight security at Air India for a month after it found a number of deficiencies in a current audit of the Tata Group-run airline. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) carried out the surveillance of the full-service service on 25-26 July within the areas of inner audit, accident prevention work and availability of required technical workers power.

As a part of the audit, the regulator has discovered deficiencies within the accident prevention work carried out by the airline and it additionally didn’t have requisite variety of technical workers as required underneath the flight security guide and the related civil aviation necessities.

Further it was noticed that a few of the inner audit or spot checks claimed to be carried out by the airline have been finished in a perfunctory method and never as per the regulatory necessities, the regulator has stated in an announcement.

After reviewing a report submitted by Air India on the motion taken, the regulator had issued present trigger discover to the involved officers.

“Based on the evaluate of the replies acquired, the airline has been directed to not assign any audits/surveillance/spot checks pertaining to compliance of DGCA necessities to the actual auditor concerned within the perfunctory inspections which signifies lack of diligence. Further, the approval of Chief of Flight Safety of M/s Air India has been suspended for a interval of 1 month for the lapses established,” the regulator added.

In July, the regulator had imposed a penalty of ₹30 lakh on IndiGo after it discovered sure systemic deficiencies within the airline’s documentation pertaining to operations, coaching procedures and engineering procedures.

The regulator had additionally imposed a monetary penalty of ₹20 lakh on Air Aisa India in February earlier this yr for violation of relevant DGCA Civil Aviation Requirements associated to pilot workout routines.

“We acknowledge and settle for the DGCA’s discovering, and remorse the failure of one in all our audit workers to totally adjust to the method and documentation necessities. Safety is Air India’s highest precedence, and we’re investing closely in folks, processes and techniques to boost Air India’s requirements to finest apply,” an Air India spokesperson stated.

“We are sparing no effort to uplift the tradition of security and diligence to modern requirements, via clarifying necessities, coaching and stricter consequence administration. We will proceed these efforts for so long as is required to impact the mandatory modifications,” the spokesperson added.