Passengers wait at Ahmedabad airport on Wednesday. (PTI)

New Delhi, April 27: More than 4,500 aspiring pilots will face a battery of “stringent” tests over the weekend as India’s civil aviation regulator tries to make the skies “safer” following the recent scandal over the award of pilot licences.

The tests will be conducted by the directorate-general of civil aviation (DGCA), which has been shaken by the revelations about a dozen-odd pilots with fake degrees and fudged flying-hour certificates, and about nepotism in clearing pilots with dubious test records.

The investigations have till now shamed two top DGCA officials — deputy director-general A.K. Sharan and director (air safety) R.S. Passi — whose children earned their pilot’s licences in a dubious manner.

Sharan had organised special tests for his daughter Rashmi who had earlier failed in three subjects in the regular exams. She passed these tests with ease.

Worse, Sharan had sent his daughter to train at a Raipur-based aviation school that had no planes and no classrooms. The school closed down a year after Rashmi got her licence (in October 2008) and went on to become a first officer with Indigo.

Passi had forced Spicejet to recruit his daughter Garima after she had fudged her flying logs at a US aviation academy. He has since been stripped of his responsibilities.

But this could just be the tip of the iceberg: at least nine other middle-level to senior officials are being investigated on how their relatives secured licences to become either airline pilots or engineers. The son of one of the top officials under investigation is employed as a first pilot by India’s largest private airline.

“Not all cases are those of nepotism — there are staffers whose children or relatives are bona fide, proper pilots… but there are cases of black sheep too,” said U.K. Bose, former chief executive of Air Sahara and aviation consultant.

What makes the probe more complicated is the theft of documents that could have nailed insiders. Files relating to at least two of the pilots under investigation are missing.

The irony is, the DGCA’s exams for new pilots were considered among the “toughest” globally — one needs to score 70 per cent just to pass — till a dangerously faulty landing last January by an Indigo pilot, Parminder Kaur Gulati, unleashed the probe.

Since the investigations began, police have arrested one middle-ranking DGCA official — assistant director Pradeep Kumar — for speeding up pilot’s licences through two men, Lalit and Pankaj Jain, who acted as go-betweens with flying schools.

Part of the reason for the fudging was that the regulator was too understaffed for it to thoroughly check foul play. The DGCA has just 140 employees — about a fourth of the sanctioned strength of 427 technical positions and 129 support staff — to monitor 40 flying schools and 10,000 pilots.

Many analysts argue that a properly staffed and independent aviation regulator is the only way out of the mess.