You could probably forgive passengers – and even some reporters – for being confused about what the FAA’s recent downgrade of India’s aviation safety rating from Category 1 to Category 2 means. After all, passengers want to know whether the airlines they plan to fly meet safety standards. And are probably somewhat less interested in the rating of a country’s civil aviation authority unless that rating translates into the safety of that country’s airlines.
So what’s a passenger looking to book a flight to India supposed to do with this latest information? Do you book Air India or not? And once in India, how does a traveler go from say Mumbai to New Delhi if not by flying an Indian airline? Unfortunately, the FAA’s ratings have little to do with the airlines themselves and are, instead, a rating of a country’s aviation authority against the oversight standards established by the International Civil Aviation Organization. A little background may be helpful to explain how the FAA got into the business of rating other countries’ civil aviation authorities.
As often happens in aviation, an aircraft accident spurred the FAA to act. In this case, it was the crash of Avianca Flight 52 onto a hillside on Long Island’s Cove Neck one foggy, winter’s evening 24 years ago last month. The Boeing 707-321B crashed after running out of fuel on approach to John F. Kennedy International Airport en route from Bogota, Colombia with an intermediate stop in Medellin, Colombia. Of the 158 passengers on board, 73 were fatally injured.
The NTSB determined the probable cause of the accident was the pilots’ failure to properly manage the fuel on board the aircraft and their failure to timely communicate to air traffic control the emergency fuel situation prior to running out of fuel. Among the factors contributing to the accident were Avianca’s failure to use a flight dispatch system to assist pilots in planning, fuel requirements and flight following, as is required for US airlines, and the pilots’ lack of proficiency in English.
The accident and the findings of the investigation caused concern within the US government – and the FAA in particular – about the safety of foreign airlines flying into the US. The FAA determined to do something about that, albeit indirectly. Thus was born the International Aviation Safety Audit or IASA in 1992. Instead of directly auditing airlines that fly into the US, the FAA decided to audit the civil aviation authorities of countries against standards established by ICAO (the International Civil Aviation Organization). Under IASA, the FAA’s audit measures a country’s ability to certify, monitor and enforce aviation safety regulations with regard to its own airlines. Category 1 means a country’s aviation safety oversight meets ICAO standards and Category 2 means it does not.
In India’s case, a Category 2 designation means that India’s airlines cannot enter into or continue code share agreements with US airlines and that its airlines cannot initiate new service or increase existing service into or out of the US. It also means that its airlines are subject to increased FAA scrutiny in the US. As far as a passenger's decision whether to fly India’s airlines, it’s really up to each passenger to evaluate. The risks of an airline accident even in the developing world are relatively small. But still. If you have a choice, flying a US airline or an airline of a country with a Category 1 rating (any European airline, for example) over a Category 2 makes sense. In India, the decision to fly an Indian airline has to be weighed against the much higher risks of traveling by other modes of transportation such as driving or taking the train.
