Under the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme, a five member audit team carried out the audit of India in areas of Personal Licensing, Airworthiness, Operations, Legislation and Organization from 6th to 16th November.
The audit involved verification of response provided by DGCA against protocol questions made available by ICAO. Verification process consisted of checking the documentary evidence, perusal of relevant files, discussions with relevant officers and industry visits. 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.