India retains FAA’s Category-I status

India has managed to stay in Category-I of the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), paving the way for the nation’s carriers to expand flights to US destinations.
FAA representatives had earlier threatened to downgrade the country to Category-II, which would have blocked flight expansion plans of Indian carriers.

“After a detailed audit of air safety and surveillance programmes of the DGCA, an FAA team announced today [Wednesday] that India was found fully compliant with FAA guidelines and met the eligibility criteria to retain Category-I status,” aviation secretary M Nambiar said.

During the audit, the FAA representatives held a series of discussions with DGCA officials and pointed out staff shortage and a lack of technical manpower and safety oversight mechanism.

“The DGCA sorted out all the issues in record five months,” a proud director general of civil aviation Nasim Zaidi said.