Union Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu on Monday refuted claims that the preliminary report on the recent Air India crash was biased, criticising sections of the Western media for promoting “their own narrative.” Speaking in the Rajya Sabha, Naidu emphasised the need to avoid premature conclusions and assured that the final report would provide a clearer and comprehensive understanding of the tragedy, which ranks among India's worst aviation disasters.
00:00the people who are supposed to be participating in the investigation and they have gone through
00:05the first set of investigation process and they have given us the preliminary report and if you
00:09look at the preliminary reports are AIB as for the first time so these whenever these incidents
00:15happen and if the black box gets damaged black box is the flight data recorder which has all the
00:21necessary information which gets recorded and whenever there is a slight damage that happens
00:25it was always it came to that point sir where we were sending the black box outside to the original
00:31equipment manufacturer and getting it decoded from that state of manufacture only and it was for the
00:36first time that as a country India took a stand that the black box which was achieved even if it
00:42was damaged that the whole decoding process is going to happen in the country and we have successfully
00:47done it in the country also the AIB has been successful in decoding the entire data which
00:52was available even if the black was from the outer side if it was looking damaged also and once the
00:57AIB has achieved the decoded the data which was achieved from two different things one was the
01:03flight data recorder which has the data numbers and also the cockpit voice recorder which has the audio
01:08this thing so all these things taking out the facts the investigation processor runs on three
01:14principles which is to find out what happened how it happened and why it happened and preliminary report
01:21it is called the preliminary report because it can't address all the things and all the questions that
01:26we have right now and what we have done what the AIB has done in fact through the preliminary report
01:31is to kind of address what happened based on the facts it found out in the CVR based on the facts it
01:38found out from the FDR and only the facts that it was able to determine were mentioned in the
01:43preliminary report and to come out with the suggestions or to come out with the exact cause of what
01:50happened and to come out with the further future action on it can be the Boeing 787 or the series
01:56or the fuel switches and many things which have come under question or the avionics which you have
02:00also mentioned in your question to have a definitive answer and a definitive future correction measures
02:06we have to look at the final report sir and I can say this to the house and through you to the people
02:11of this country also that the AIB has a very definitive thorough rule based process they are a very
02:19transparently looking into the process right now and they are totally unbiased this also I can say that
02:25the AIB is totally unbiased and looking into the facts now there can be many questions also I have seen
02:31multiple articles myself I have seen multiple articles not only by the Indian media but also the western media
02:37trying to promote their own narrative their own viewpoint their own kind of consideration but I have to tell you
02:45that the way we are seeing the investigation is through the facts we want to stand by the truth not what is
02:51happening with the pilots or not what is happening with the Boeing or not what is happening with the Air India or any
02:56other stakeholder which is this we want to stand by the truth we want to find out what exactly happened and that is only
03:04going to be coming out once the final report has been placed so we have to respect the process of investigation and once the
03:11process of investigation has happened then we can talk about what happened and how it happened and then the corrective measures
03:17if we talk about the other incidents that would have happened before let it be the Air Nippon Japanese Airways or any other
03:24airways for that fact every time any incident happens in any country then the same process is followed where the
03:31investigation body gets into the process of investigation and once the thorough investigation is done and the final report is placed only then the corrective measures to all the
03:39only then the corrective measures to all these countries and all these airline operators and all the regulators is sent so that the corrective action is being done and this has happened in the previous incidences also wherever there was any incident happened
03:51whenever there was a mandatory suggestive correction measures that were supposed to be done through the international protocol it is mandatory for every state regulator to follow these and every airline operator to follow these and we have thoroughly without any negligence we have thoroughly followed all the corrective and suggestive measures
04:06from the ICAO international protocol
04:09Thank you second supplementary
04:13As we are all aware that the DGCA is the cornerstone of aviation safety in our country but as we know that in spite of these serious incidents which have taken place in our country at this
04:29the DGCA is functioning at 50 50 percent of its sanctioned strength technical strength it is a very serious issue I would like to know from the Honourable Minister whether the government acknowledges this accurate shortage of technical personnel within the DGCA and what urgent and time bound steps are being taken to fill these critical vacancies so that the regulator is fully equipped to safeguard the
04:58to safeguard the lives of the lives of lack of passengers who rely on air travel every day
05:05Thank you
05:07We all know the kind of progress civil aviation took in the last 10 years and I have also been time and again talking about the tremendous numbers depicting the growth that we have seen in the country
05:17Right in the number of aircrafts or the passengers that travel through air who prefer air travel or the number of airports everything has almost doubled in the last 10 years or more than doubled in the last 10 years sir even after we see that the covid which was a major road break for civil aviation we have crossed the pre covid numbers and we are seeing a tremendous growth in civil aviation network and this is why we from the ministry also recommended that we need to create more posts in the
05:47In this DGCA so that the surveillance or the safety or the security of civil aviation is very much intact with the tremendous robust growth that we are seeing and this post that we are seeing which are vacant which has come to discussion is the post which have been created in last year and over the period of last two to three years and we have to understand that creation of posts and recruitment of posts is a continuous process and there is UPSC which is also involved and we from the ministry are in continuous discussion and last year itself we have recruited hundreds of
06:17103 posts which in the history of DGCA was the highest number of posts which was recruited and this year we have planned to recruit 190 where UPSC also has come forward and by October end of October we are going to recruit 190 posts for this DGCA and the other thing which is more practical that I want to tell the house is that these are very niche and technical posts it's not like we have a huge pool this is a limited pool of subject matter experts let it be the engineers
06:45or the pilots or the pilots or medical experts this is a very specific pool of people that we are trying to pick up from and it is a very tough process of picking up the right people because these are going to be the regulators these are going to be the inspectors these are going to take care of the safety so the recruitment process is also a very rigorous process and we are doing our we have taken notice of the this thing also and it has been a continuing process and we are putting more
07:15pressure so that the timelines for the recruitment also come down and very soon we are in the process of achieving 90 percent of these vacancies also to be recruited
