Message from President, BAOA

MESSAGE

As President of our Association, I would like to put in a certain perspective to a basic question: What is BAOA’s responsibility? It is of course to work for a better all-round business environment. But it is also to do our bit to lift industry morale, help create excitement, and, in our own small way, infuse a spirit of camaraderie within our industry, and so on. All this may sound rather lofty, and rightfully so, this is primarily the job of the government. However, these are also the ‘end results’ of our efforts. From Aircraft Owners/Users, to Pilots/Engineers/Technicians, to Commercial/Admin/Managerial staff and even DGCA officials …. we are all in it together. It is to this end, that I stated the above perspective as a responsibility of BAOA, as to what we are working towards.

A word about industry growth—I think we are all realistic enough to know that broad business aircraft numbers for the nation are not going to grow in a great hurry. But what will happen, at least during the next year, is a sort of ‘slow cleansing’ in the industry. Many BA aircraft are being sold out of India. Many are also coming in. Depending on the net flow, we may or may not see real growth in the near term. But we are on the right path, with better quality planes coming in (albeit slowly), more serious players and innovators coming in, better safety practices being forged, with broader SMS foundation laying, greater transparency and speed on its way within DGCA (we are told that the eDGCA project will have some 70 odd regular DGCA functions going online, and this will probably be launched in the coming months). But overall, in the short run we must all brace ourselves to face churn, loss of jobs and so on. Hopefully, it is all for a better tomorrow. A big spike in this has been the floods that hit Chennai airport. There is a human side to the tragedy, as also a huge economic loss which is still being assessed. Lets’ hope we can tide over this.

Staying with the same theme of transitioning/cleansing—The initial CAP 3100 adoption process for the industry has been a period of great pain and anguish for all of us, given the changing and arbitrary interpretations, lack of transparency and clarity, with many requirements being unjustifiable. Certainly it could have been ushered in a better manner. But the initial adoption phase is behind most of us, and there is no denying it has been ultimately good for the industry. It has brought in a sort of order, standardisation, and plugged the gaps greatly in terms of manuals and compliance.

Having met many operators, handlers and member representatives over the last few months; I sense both emotions—optimism and scepticism. This is a consequence of the daily battles we fight as Operators, and the hassles we face in the industry. It is possible that some people do not realise the extent of activism and advocacy, the number of meetings, the convincing, the letters and follow-ups being done by us. I would personally like to engage with people and try to explain to them our work and efforts, if not achievements. It will in any case also be great to imbibe every viewpoint coming from the industry.

Today, we are probably one of the most active associations amongst other industries in India. We are also the youngest, yet amongst the largest, when compared to business aviation associations around the world. After interacting with some other BA associations from other countries, I realised they too have their share of problems and BAOA is actually fairly active as compared to some of them (Let’s leave out the NBAA of USA which is in another league!) This is not to say that we do not have room to improve. Please do e-mail or call your thoughts for this. I will end by saying that ‘greater membership only gives us greater leverage in our efforts’. I therefore urge all our members to help us expand the membership base of BAOA. The raw fact is that the association has provided a unifying voice to the lawmakers, and we are being heard and acted upon. Our strength and leverage only increases with an ever wider membership base.

Safe flying,