Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Comments on DGCA's recent guidelines for air travel by people with disabilities

The Office of the Director General of Civil Aviation had recently opened its draft on the Civil Aviation Requirements for the "Carriage of Physically Challenged Passengers by Air" for public review. The requirements were intended to go into enforcement on August 15, 2007...interestingly also the deadline for sending your comments to DGCA! Now, one might wonder about the sense of setting the same date for both actions...shouldn't the Office at least put on the show of considering the recommendations made by persons with disabilities, affiliated organizations, airlines, and the aam junta?? The grapevine insists that no disabled persons organizations were approached before the requirements were drafted so it would be nice if their comments were given some weight afterwards.

Anyways, here are my comments on the requirements if anyone is interested. Most are my own, and some are replicated from AccessAbility's comments to reinforce suggestions that they put in much better words.

Now I do want to say that I appreciate the fact that the DGCA has actually taken the step of developing these guidelines...it is past high time that the matter is given serious consideration. The guidelines they've put together however do fall short of the kind of framework you need to ensure that people with disabilities enjoy enhanced independence and access in air travel. But while I was browsing for similar regulations in other developing and neighbouring countries for comparison purposes, I came up with none! (Maybe Google is failing me?? So if you know of some please let me know!) Hence I am glad that India is taking the step forward...

Understandingly, there is some unrest among the disability community in India about the requirements themselves, and the manner in which they were released. For some insight read:
1. Shivani Gupta's assessment on the issue where she also summarizes the horrible experience Rajeev Rajan had to go through recently.
2. Article in The Hindu on the reactions to the DGCA draft and deadline.