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DGCA paying for phantom gliders in Pune

(Government Business, New Delhi, June 22, 2001)

Pune: If you are a flyer and live in a city where a gliding club exists with all the necessary gliders and equipment, but you aren’t allowed to make full use of these, your frustration level would be understandably high.

This is just the case with the Gliding Centre in Hadapsar run by the director general of civil aviation (DGCA).

Members of the centre have numerous complaints about the way the centre has been run and with frustration levels peaking, have now written to the DGCA in Delhi asking his intercession.

What has triggered this latest round of discontent is that flying at the centre, never encouraged too actively, has come to an absolute standstill.

The reason is that chief instructor P N Sharma has processed on one month’s leave to the USA, without handing over to the USA, without handing over charge to his second-in-command, Shailesh Charbhe. Not just that, Mr. Sharma has issued strict instructions that no flying should take place in his absence!

This prompted three senior members A G Bharucha, Ravi Mahbubani and P Gosavi, to write the letter dated April 25, 2001 to Captain R L Bhiala, director, training and licensing at the DGCA, Delhi urging him to authorise Charbhe to conduct flying activity. The months of April and May have optimum wind conditions and to be prevented from flying at this time is particularly perverse.
However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The lack of activity at the centre has been a major irritant for the members (a report to this effect was published in Pune Times, February 25, 2000). Senior members of the club had alleged that during the 10 years of Sharma’s tenure, flying activity has been completely throttled.

A display board at the centre indicates that the centre has not produced a single licensed glider pilot since 1992 and no licensed flight instructor since 1991.

According to the members, the centre which has three licensed flight instructors, including Sharma, conducts only 700 flights annually, when it can easily do as many as 10,000 flights.

Only one of the four metal-bodied L23 gliders available at the centre is being used today. An aircraft which was badly damaged a few years ago, continues to lie unattended in the hanger.

The lack of any effort to promote flying has resulted in falling membership, members allege; there are just five or six regular flyers today.

This would be unremarkable were the club a private one. However, it is funded by the DGCA and ha an annual budget of Rs. 25 lakh.
Officials contacted by this paper in Delhi proved most unhelpful. A detailed letter to Captain R L Biala, Sharma’s boss at the DGCA, Delhi, seeking his comments on the above allegations, met with no response. When contacted on the telephone. Capt Biala refused to comment and simply said, “I do not speak to the press. I am not entitled to”. Asked who was entitled to give us answers, Biala replied, “do not know.”

Repeated attempts to contact H S Khola, the DGCA, at both his home and office in Delhi proved futile.
An official at the DGCA’s Mumbai office, told the Times of India, that their office had forwarded the complaint of the Pune members to the DGCA.

Whether this meets with the same fate as our attempts to get a reply, remains to be seen. The central government however, needs to seriously examine the rationale of operating a centre at an annual cost of Rs. 25 lakh, with four aircraft, 30 employees, 250 acres of land and residential quarters, if no flying is going to take place.

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