LIFE JACKETS MUST FOR ECONOMY FLYERS TOO: DGCA

It’s been a kind of ’apartheid’ that has till now been practised by airlines in India: while economy class passengers are told to hold on to their seat cushions in case the aircraft crashes into the sea, business and first class passengers are asked to take out the life jackets placed below each premium class seat. But now, the directorate general of civil aviation has sought to end this difference by making it mandatory for Indian carriers to have life jackets for every passenger — irrespective of the class he or she flies in.

The new rule is mandatory for Indian aircraft flying on overseas international routes and even domestic ones where a minimum of 50 nautical miles (90km) have to be flown over sea. This would include routes like Chennai-Kolkata and all flights to Port Blair from the mainland.

The ending of this ’apartheid’ was among the several steps listed by aviation authorities here in response to the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) team’s observations. The team is in Delhi currently to review whether the promises India made to upgrade aviation standards are actually being fulfilled or not. On Thursday, the civil aviation ministry said in a statement that DGCA would continue to remain in Category 1 of FAA’s International Aviation Safety Assessment Programme (IASA).

The concern had arisen after international authorities found about two years ago that though Indian aviation was growing by leaps and bounds, no steps had been taken to accordingly strengthen the regulatory mechanism to ensure safe flights. Things got so bad that FAA had threatened that it may downgrade India to lower categories of safety.

In fact, FAA complimented the steps that director general of civil aviation Nasim Zaidi and his team are taking to strengthen the regulatory mechanism now. "The FAA team stated that DGCA... has demonstrated amazing improvement in continuing to enhance and improve safety oversight system beyond expectations. The FAA concluded that India not only continues to meet FAA’s IASA Category-1 status but also... plays a leadership role for other nations in the Asia region in civil aviation sector," the ministry statement said.