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Informist, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026

 

NEW DELHI – The government is examining the Flydubai incident and will internally discuss whether to issue an advisory to airlines operating domestically, Civil Aviation Secretary Samir Kumar Sinha said Thursday. "This is an unfortunate incident, but the nation is very proud of the fact that...Captain Smit...is an Indian and he has been able to save so many lives," Sinha said, adding, "Since the incident happened in a different country, we would not like to kind of delve into this...and of course it would be kind of being examined, but yes, this is under examination."

 

On Wednesday, a Flydubai aircraft flying from the United Arab Emirates to Israel faced an emergency situation where one of the pilots stabbed Captain Smit Machchhar inside the cockpit, making the plane lose altitude and divert to Saudi Arabia. 

 

In order to bring in more reforms in the civil aviation sector, the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security will identify issues and pain points for passengers, businesses, and staff, among others, and will take decisions in the interest of ease of doing business and overall sector growth, the secretary said at a press conference titled BCAS Reforms to Improve Operational Efficiency and Ease of Doing Business. 

 

According to Sinha, maintenance, repair, and overhaul facilities, and commercial establishments inside airports, among other entities, might be encountering issues and would require support from the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security. "What we have done is that we have identified a few issues...the kind of what we call pain points and thereafter, internally, we have discussed and at length these issues, and thereafter...going forward, we are able to resolve such issues in a definite given time frame," Sinha said.

 

Director General of Bureau of Civil Aviation Security Rajesh Nirwan said the ministry has been in discussions with various stakeholders at different airports in India to identify difficulties they are facing in terms of security. "This is not the end of what we propose to do, it will be a continuous exercise," he said. The bureau will move to other issues once the first tranche of reforms is processed to ease business in the civil aviation ecosystem, he added. 

 

Emphasising enabling the airport sector for any new entrepreneur for any commercial work, the agency wants to enable access to them without any regulatory issues. "Every airport means more commercial establishments, more GHAs (ground handling agencies), more regulatory approvals, so the pace at which we are growing requires us to embrace technology, and it also requires us to be more predictable in our regulatory approach, so that entities do not face any difficulty, and they also do not face any entry barriers, while entering into the aviation sector," Nirwan said.

 

The security agency will digitalise the process of obtaining an aerodrome entry permit. Now, the bureau will allow the permit to be obtained through online registration instead of the old manual pathway, which was time-consuming. The aerodrome entry permit portal will allow the entrant to unlock the gates by the means of facial biometric at the airport. This feature will be rolled out later this month, Nirwan said. 

 

With the new digital portal, the security agency expects to cut down on longer processing times for temporary passes, and help entities operate smoothly. "You can understand 15 lakh (1.5 million) or more than 10 lakh (one million) applicants would be benefited by this rollout," he added.

 

Facial scan will be achieved through a device installed at the gates, for which the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security is in constant contact with the airport operators. "This will be launched at all 179 airports at the same time, all across the country," Nirwan said.  End

 

Reported by Pratyush Kumar
Edited by Avishek Dutta

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