Government has laid down the minimum standards for proficiency skills of personnel, including pilots and air traffic controllers, and made it effective from this week.
NEW DELHI: In a bid to standardise English proficiency for all functions relating to flying over Indian airspace, government has laid down the minimum standards for proficiency skills of personnel, including pilots and air traffic controllers, and made it effective from this week.
Proficiency in English was made mandatory for pilots, air traffic controllers and other concerned staff operating in India after the November 11, 1996 Charkhi Dadri mid-air collision, but no standard was set for the purpose.
A major cause of the collision was that the pilot of one of the aircraft could not understand the English directives of the ATC and brought the aircraft down to the same height as that of the other plane, instead of gaining height. This had led to the collision.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has brought out a circular, which says that all aircraft personnel like pilots, flight engineers and flight navigators, air traffic controllers and aeronautical station operators 'shall have their English language proficiency evaluated to the ICAO language proficiency standards within a period of three years from March 5, 2008.'
Licenses granted to these personnel after this date would be considered to have the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation) language proficiency level 4
(operational). All applicants for these jobs would have to fulfil this requirement and undertake a test to get a license.
The test would be framed and certified by the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation) and would be on the pattern of the established global English examinations like the TOEFL (Teaching of English as a Foreign Language), keeping in mind the language used in radio-telephony.
After the Charkhi Dadri incident, India had moved the ICAO to standardise English proficiency for all flight related personnel.
The mid-air collision, considered the worst in global aviation history, killed all the 312 passengers and crew on board the Saudia aircraft and 37 in the Kazakh airline plane.
The accident was probed by a commission, headed by Justice RC Lahoti, which had determined that the Kazakh IL-76 commander had decided to descend from his assigned altitude in a serious breach of operating procedure due to lack of
proficiency in English. He was relying on the radio operator for communication with the ATC tower in Delhi.
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