The beleaguered private carrier Kingfisher Airlines (KFA) may have announced a partial blackout, but the civil aviation ministry and the aviation regulator are also being criticised for the manner in which they first brushed aside serious audit objections on the carrier and later at a crucial juncture, replaced the auditing team.
In a classic case, the newly appointed DGCA recently changed the entire team, which was originally appointed to audit the airline. The officials, who had indicted KFA, in an earlier audit conducted last year, were removed from the team, in a revised order, issued by the aviation regulator. There was, however, no change in the audit teams, which were set up set up to check 49 other private carriers.
The new team made total 35 observations, in the recently concluded audit, out of which, more than 20 pertained to aviation manuals and reportedly missed out on safety and engineering issues, revealed a top DGCA official.
Arun Mishra, who took over as DGCA in July, after his predecessor EK Bharat Bhushan was unceremoniously removed, had directed to set up a new team, to audit KFA and Air India charters, against whom damaging reports were submitted earlier.
