New Delhi: India’s civil aviation regulator has initiated an investigation into the conduct of its employee Captain Anil Gill, who has been accused of demanding bribes for extending favours.
Gill was transferred a few days ago to the aerosports department from the flying training department at the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.
“Here is a diehard dare devil govt official, who is taking entire planes and aircraft as bribe in quid pro quo for extending favours,” the whistleblower wrote in the complaint to the DGCA, a copy of which has been reviewed by Mint. The complaint has also been marked to several senior officials of the civil aviation ministry and DGCA including the civil aviation minister as well as the aviation secretary.
The complainant has alleged that Gill takes “huge cash” as bribe for not taking the prescribed action against flying training organisations. It has also been alleged that the official forces some flying training organisations, who cannot pay such amount of cash, to sell one of their remaining training aircraft at nominal price in bargain “for closing his eyes”.
For the same, he has allegedly formed at least two ‘benami’ companies, under the name of Blue Throat Aero Global and Sabres Corporation Solutions where his family members are directors.
“After procuring such aircraft as bribe from FTOs in the name of companies owned by his relatives and run under his supervision, he leases out such aircraft taken in bribe to some other FTO, whom he takes under his feather and connives with them to over-log the flying hours,” the complainant has further claimed.
The complaint alleged that Gill acquired three such aircraft, including two Cessna-172 VT-AAY and VT-EUCand a Tecnam VT-DSB from Redbird Aviation via Blue Throat Aero and Sabres Corporation and leased two of them back to Redbird Aviation, while the third one was leased to Chetak Aviation Academy.
“Despite 15-20 crashes and incidents in just 36 months at Redbird training academy Capt Anil Gill has not taken any regulatory action against this flying academy because his own aircraft are being rented there,” the complainant further said, adding that Capt Gill’s relatives have also formed another leasing company Sandhill Aviation IFSC in GIFT City for aircraft leasing business.
Following the 25 Oct complaint, the DGCA transferred two senior officials, including Capt Gill, the Director of Flying Training, and a Senior Flight Operations Inspector.
Queries sent to Capt Gill and DGCA remained unanswered until press time.
Redbird came to the limelight on 23 Oct when DGCA suspended the operations of pilot training academy Redbird Aviation at all its bases, citing maintenance and operational gaps following two aircraft crash landing incidents over a period of one week.
It has five air bases in India at Baramati, Seoni, Lilabari, Belagavi, and Gulbarga, and another one is in Colombo, Sri Lanka. In August, Redbird had also tied up with Singapore-based Aviation Safety and Training Pte. Ltd (AST) for type-rating training to aspiring pilots on A320, A320neo, and B737 new generation simulators, in orderto offer a full package to trainees for a complete commercial pilot licence.
“Till date, Redbird has not sold any aircraft, not even a tyre, to any one else. So far, the company hasacquired over 40 aircraft and the process is underway toacquire another 20. These allegations are baseless and we have not received any preferential treatment. We are enhancing our processes further post the DGCA noticeregarding crash landings. Those were unfortunate but we continue to build a safe flying training organization,” an executive at Redbird Aviation told Mint, on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, a person aware of the matter said, “These allegations are incorrect and seem like a conspiracy to frame Capt Gill by some FTOs who wanted a free hand in flouting norms.”
Gill was trying to implement a range of reforms to improve transparency such as remote live screening of FTOs, mandatory cameras to stop fake logging of flying hours by trainee pilots, the person said.
“His distant relative was part of Blue Throat but the relative was only involved until 2022, and I believe he had kept the office informed about it. He has no association with Sabres Corporation. His job was limited to surveillance. Investigation was not part of his profile so these claims are baseless,” the person added.