DGCA mulls online pilot registry

NEW DELHI: The government is planning to create an online national registry of pilots with a complete dossier on each one, in a bid to check pilots getting licences and jobs on the basis of fudged papers and endangering air safety. The director general of civil aviation, Bharat Bhushan, will be examining the feasibility of this project in association with an agency like Nasscom.

The plan is to put all the documents of every pilot on an online registry from the moment he or she applies for a licence, which can be accessed by airlines at the time of hiring pilots, said an official.

The biggest problem, so far, has been in getting report cards from DGCA's examination branch at R K Puram. These, then, have to be submitted at the head office licences. Shockingly, recent cases revealed that pilots were able to submit fudged papers here and get licences without any cross-checking. Once the original results and all other relevant papers are put online, this problem could be addressed to a large extent and also reduce human interface that can lead to malpractices.

Owing to the massive staff crunch at the directorate, especially when it has to undertake checks on 40 flying schools and almost an equal number of aircraft-maintenance engineering institutes, the two men spearheading the clean-up job, aviation secretary Nasim Zaidi and Bhushan, have decided to take personnel from Airports Authority of India and Pawan Hans to complete this job in next two to three months.

''We have decided to get the audit of schools done by our officers and independent experts from outside, which could include even retired personnel,'' sources said.