Considering the large number of business aircraft crowding the skies—especially small, fast jets—the time may have arrived when outsourcing business aviation safety may be the most viable solution.

In the limelight for rising fares egged on by soaring fuel prices since July, the aviation sector was stunned when Mukesh Ambani’s aircraft were seized for alleged evasion of customs duty, setting off a domino effect with 70 corporate offices reportedly interrogated on the stated and practiced purposes of their aircraft. Current government policy is to promote commercial purposes of aircraft such as to provide the opportunity and expedite air travel.

The customs duty differential between the commercial use—purportedly the original intent for acquiring some of these aircraft—and private use is substantial, the latter being higher by 19 per cent. The resultant loss to the exchequer over the last six years could have well run into hundreds of crores. No doubt some nimble legal brains will circumnavigate the showcause notices issued to the importers of these aircraft and the eventual collection of evaded duty will come to naught. However, the issue has highlighted the fact that the actual operations of business aviation aircraft in India are perhaps not as transparent to the regulatory mechanism as the scheduled airline operations. While one of the penumbraic areas is that of the end use of aircraft imported for commercial use, another area is the safety standards these aircraft operate under.

Absence of safety regulations

A report in the Irish Times on investigations into a helicopter crash recommended the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) carry out an urgent review of the regulation of corporate aviation activity in Europe. According to the report, this is the third time in 11 years that the British Department of Transport’s Air Accident Investigation Unit has raised the issue of absence of regulations covering corporate aviation with the European authorities. Since 1997, the Joint Aviation Authority (JAA) and the EASA have been prompted by three accident investigation teams about the absence of regulations covering corporate aviation activity in Europe, but to no avail. A similar lack of regulations appears to exist in the context of business aviation in India.