Federation of Indian Pilots writes to the DGCA about simplifying the process to convert an Indian licence to a foreign one

A view of a flight landing at Chennai airport on April 12.

The 6,000-pilot-strong Federation of Indian Pilots has written to the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), requesting a simplification in the processes involved when an Indian flight crew licensee attempts to convert his/her licence to a foreign licence.

The FIP is particularly perturbed over a public notice issued by the DGCA (F.NO.AV.11012/5/2018-DTL-DGCA dated 19th June 2019) making it mandatory for all Indian flight crew licensees attempting to convert their licence to a foreign licence to produce a certificate of accident-free flying for 10 years and an incident-free record for three years issued by their employer. The notice further mandates that in the case of involvement in an accident or incident, the applicant must provide evidence of “clearance for normal operation” from the DGCA.

In a letter dated April 13 addressed to Arun Kumar, Director General of the DGCA, the FIP has argued that the DGCA should make the process a simpler one by expunging the requirement that all Indian flight crew licensees attempting to convert their license to a foreign license must produce a document from the employer.

States the letter: “When someone who holds an Indian flight crew license tries to convert his/her license to a foreign license the respective regulatory authorities insist on the verification of Indian flight crew licenses by sending an email to the office of the DGCA as per provisions of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Annex 1 and ICAO Doc 9379. It has been the experience of many of our members that the office of the DGCA does not respond in a timely manner to such requests thus causing immense hardship to pilots.”

The FIP notes in its letter that foreign regulatory agencies are only interested in verifying the authenticity of the licence. The FIP also seeks to know why a pilot should have to produce a document from an employer when the office of the DGCA itself has all the records of incidents/accidents and the enforcement action against all the pilots in the country.

The FIP letter also seeks to highlight the fact that the DGCA’s own notice states that the process of verification should be “without prejudice to any mutual contract between the employer and the employee”.