Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA)

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) is the chief regulatory body in India for civil aviation. The DGCA is frequently in the news owing to the recent interest in drones in India. In this article, you can read all about the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), its functions, and other details for the UPSC exam.

Directorate General of Civil Aviation UPSC

The DGCA is an attached office of the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Government of India.

• The DGCA is the regulatory body in the field of Civil Aviation and primarily deals with safety issues.
• The DGCA is responsible for regulating air transport services to/from/within India.
• The regulatory body is also responsible for the enforcement of civil air regulations, air safety and airworthiness standards.
• It also coordinates all regulatory functions with the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).
  • ICAO is a United Nations (UN) specialised agency, established in 1944, which laid the foundation for the standards and procedures for peaceful global air navigation.
  • India is among its 193 members.
  • It is headquartered in Montreal, Canada.
• The DGCA headquarters are located in New Delhi with regional offices in various parts of India.
• It is headed by the Director General of Civil Aviation.

DGCA Recent Approval

One of the recent important approvals made by the DGCA is as under.

• Drone manufacturer ‘Garuda Aerospace’ has become India’s first drone startup to receive double certification by DGCA for their indigenously designed Kisan Drones. 
• The Made in India ‘Kisan’ drones are particularly developed for agricultural purposes such as reducing crop loss, crop health monitoring, yield measurement, and crop loss mitigation with the latest manufacturing capacities.

For more on Kisan Drones, check PIB dated May 2, 2022.

DGCA Functions

The primary functions of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation are illustrated in the image below:

Image source – www.dgca.gov.in

 e-GCA (e-governance in DGCA)

The e-governance platform in DGCA was launched in November 2021.

• The eGCA initiative is a milestone in the digital transformation journey of DGCA and a step in the direction of ‘ease of doing business’.
• This single-window platform aims to bring in monumental change eliminating operational inefficiencies, minimising personal interaction, enhancing transparency, increasing productivity and improving regulatory reporting.
• e-GCA provides a strong IT infrastructure and service delivery framework. The e-platform provides an end-to-end solution including various software applications, connectivity with all the regional offices, a ‘portal’ for dissemination of information and for providing online and speedy service delivery in a secure environment.
• The project has been implemented with TCS as Service Provider and PWC as the Project Management Consultant.
• A new process for auto-filling a pilot’s e-logbook by integrating Aircraft System data of scheduled airline operators with eGCA was started in 2022. Apart from fetching real-time pilots’ flying hours with accuracy, with minimised manual intervention, this will help in the timely submission of applications by pilots for issue, renewal, and endorsement of licences by removal of multi-layer data-validation steps.
  • IndiGo has already implemented this method and other scheduled airlines are in the final stages of testing and are also expected to implement the same.

Aviation Safety Ranking

The biggest “achievement” in 2022 was the significant jump in the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s coordinated validation mission (or audit) of the Indian DGCA that was conducted in November 2022. As a result, the effective implementation score of India has risen from the previous 69.95% to nearly 85.49%, thereby changing India’s Safety Oversight rank from 102 to 48, among the 193 contracting states.

Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA):- Download PDF Here