Minister of state for civil aviation Praful Patel said Thursday that the government was considering setting up an independent safety board on the lines of America’s National Trans-portation Safety Board (NTSB) to probe all accidents, and also planning legislation to vest further powers with the DGCA, the civil aviation regulator.
The government on Thursday also appointed a court of inquiry headed by Air Marshal B.N. Gokhale (Retd), former vice-chief of the Indian Air Force, to investigate the recent Air India Express crash in Mangalore. The announcements came on a day when the first meeting of the newly-appointed Civil Aviation Safety Advisory Council (CASAC) was held in New Delhi, where representatives of the US Federal Aviation Administration also participated.
The minister said the government planned to separate the “regulator” and “investigator” functions of the DGCA in the aviation sector. The DGCA at present performs both roles. It is envisaged that the proposed new safety board would be modelled on the lines of the NTSB in the US, but it is not yet clear whether its purview would be limited to accidents only in aviation or throughout the transport sector.