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This story is from April 12, 2011

13 FIRs lodged by DGCA so far in fake pilot licence scam

Aviation regulator DGCA has so far lodged a total of 13 FIRs against as many pilots for obtaining licences on the basis of fudged documents.
13 FIRs lodged by DGCA so far in fake pilot licence scam
NEW DELHI: Aviation regulator DGCA has so far lodged a total of 13 FIRs against as many pilots for obtaining licences on the basis of fudged documents.
"We have so far lodged 13 FIRs against 13 pilots," DGCA chief EK Bharat Bhushan said on Tuesday.
Till date, 13 persons, including five pilots and three DGCA staffers, have been arrested on charges of using forged marksheets, fudged flying hours and related documents to procure flying licences from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

With the drive to verify the documents and licences of pilots and commanders nearing completion, the regulator is rushing through the process of scrutinising all papers relating to those licence holders whose cases are suspect.
Over 1,700 licences have so far been scrutinised and seven of them have turned out to be fake.
The DGCA had ordered a thorough scrutiny of the documents of all the 4,500 Airline Transport Pilot License (ATPL) holders following a probe of documents of an IndiGo pilot, Capt Parminder Kaur Gulati, who landed an Airbus 320 aircraft at Goa airport on the nosewheel, thus damaging it. She was arrested on forgery charges and later released on bail.

The regulator is now verifying the papers of over 6,300 co-pilots registered with it and hopes to complete the process at the earliest, official sources said.
Three DGCA teams would also span out across the country in a few days to carry out full-fledged audits of 40 flying schools.
These teams, comprising DGCA officers and outside experts, would verify the flying hours logged by various pilot trainees with the log books of air traffic controllers.
They would also check the aviation fuel consumption by the flying schools and their fuel bills to see if they match the flying hours clocked by their students.
The DGCA, after receiving complaints about fudging of actual flight hours logged in a student's log book by flying school to help them get a CPL, has set up three teams to carry out full-fledged audits of 40 such institutions across the country from next week.
Apart from it, Bhushan has favoured a complete revamp of issuing licence to pilots to tackle the problem of fudging of documents to obtain licences.
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