On January 11 this year, the IndiGo flight from Delhi to Goa landed in a way that violated all flying manuals. The rulebook says the larger rear wheels should touch the tarmac first, and then the small ones in front. Otherwise, the stress on the nose wheels can damage the aircraft and endanger the lives of passengers.
Parminder Kaur Gulati, the 38-year-old captain of the flight, had touched down the front wheels first.
IndiGo de-rostered the pilot immediately and sent a report to the Director General of Civil Aviation, or DGCA, the sector regulator.
When the report reached E K Bharat Bhushan, the DGCA, in the middle of February, he made a few inquiries, only to be told by his officers that the same pilot had been at the joystick in many other similar incidents. His antennae up, Bhushan ordered a check of Gulati’s results when she took her test for the Airline Transport Pilot Licence (ATPL). It turned out that she had flunked, but faked her marksheet to get the licence. Since then, the DGCA’s office, grappling with what has become the newest scandal in the country, has made Bhushan among the busiest to occupy the DGCA’s office, working day and night to clean the system.
A 55-year-old Indian Administrative Services officer from the Kerala cadre, Calicut-born Bhushan is a post-graduate in English from the University of Kerala. He also holds a master’s degree in public administration from the Harvard University, where he was an Edward Mason international fellow. Currently, he also holds the office of additional secretary and financial advisor to the civil aviation ministry.
What his investigation has revealed is that the menace of fake ATPLs has been around for much longer than one might imagine. “Actually, it was unearthed by chance. When this pilot landed in a wrong way and was de-rostered… someone said that she had made similar mistakes many times earlier and I thought it would be a good idea to check her records. What we found came as a rude shock. We had never thought someone could actually do that,” Bhushan told Business Standard.
To become a commander, a co-pilot with requisite flying hours needs to additionally appear for a test to obtain an ATPL. The test is conducted by DGCA and over 2,000 flying hours are prerequisite.
Having found that the rot did not begin or end with Gulati, the DGCA had to clean the system, with just about 130-strong skeletal staff across India, doing certification, surveillance and examinations of licences.
However, the inadequate staff has failed to deter Bhushan from starting verification of all the licences issued so far. His office has taken up some 4,500 licences already and checked over 2,000.
“The issue is very serious and the only thing we are doing nowadays is working day and night to make the system foolproof, so that people fly without fear. We have verified over 2,000 licences issued by DGCA and only eight have been found to be fake. This means the condition is not too grim,” Bhushan said.
Bhushan’s peers call him a no-nonsense man. He sounds just that as he says: “The matter is not very deep-rooted and we will solve it soon, so that all stakeholders, including passengers, fly with confidence.”
