ChrisandCin

The FATA is in hand Houston! One small step for chris, but one giant leap of faith for the aviators of India.

But really what a load of BS !

So the interview was done and dusted the previous Friday. We were told the piece of all important paper would be issued Saturday, but no later than Monday. (yeah right heard this line before!)

Of course Monday came, and Monday went… apparently one of the important signatories needed was either not present, willing, feeling like and/or able to apply his signature to the piece of paper on Monday.

So Tuesday comes, we then find out that the company has been underpaying for these FATA certificates, they have been only paying Rs500 , instead of Rs5500 ($10 versus $110)…and of course this time the file  passed via someone who cared!. So Tuesday came and went.

Then Wednesday comes, and the company rep pays the money in the morning , and then goes and sits and wait and waits and waits. By the way the aviation authority here only allows visitors into the building to conduct business between 3-5pm…but you can only see the cashier between 9am-12pm !!! Figure that one out! So the rep gets to learn about the files status, the payment is done but, there is always a but. The butt this time was they wanted my hours summarized in more detail, yes all flying since 1985 must be summarized in the next 20 minutes (its 4.40pm)… this was negotiated down to the last 6 months flying thankfully, so we were able to attain the signature of the honorable person who is responsible for the signature, and now I have been officially FATA’ed !

The fata, well I finally got my fata approved… dont ask me what that stands for I cant remember! But its the license validation needed to fly in India.In most countries this is pretty easy, you walk in show your licence and logbook, prove you are a real human and leave. But not here in India. The system is such that the aviation gods must show you they are superior and that you will be scared for your life when you go in and see them. Little do they know that 99% of the foreigners I met doing this process also think this whole thing was a joke, and to a non Indian we find the whole process a farce .

ahh i must interrupt this writing with the smell of shit emaniting from the lav in the airbus I am currently a passenger in…did someone shit on the floor??? by the look on the flight attendants face as she opens the door, yes is the answer…the big old fat lady in her sari has taken a dump and missed the big recepticle that you are meant to make your deposit in! Oh well we return to normal programming now as the lingering smell of far too much air freshner wafts paste me….

The FATA… well yesterday was a bit of a joke.

I fly 2 hrs on a airline to Delhi and arrive early , we wait for 30 minutes in the nice airconditioned waiting lounge then get ushered up to the non airconditioned offices of the gods of aviation… remember its currently 45 C or 114F outside! We get up there sit and wait for the gods to return from lunch, that lunch here is from 2pm to 3pm… they finally return and tell us there will be no interviews today. no rime or reason is given…. come back monday and maybe they can do it but its a maybe…and we wont give you an official appointment or anything in writing… just come bach monday we are told and then wait and see…..so what to do!

We wait and wait, we walk around, we go to offices looking for the inspectors, and we wait some more.

There are thankfully 2 pilots who are there to fly out a leased plane from Jet Airways, and there company has some high up connections so we follow them like bad smells hoping that if they can find an official to conduct the interview we can get an interview also.

We are told to come back at 5pm, so we wait. We come back at 5pm, only to be told come back at 5.30pm. We wait. We come back at 5.30pm, and are told come back in 15 minutes, and the inspector will decide if he wants to do some interviews… so we wait. Finally at 5.45 pm we are told that yes he feels like doing some interviews!

I am last in, I get asked no real questions this time, but am asked to open the ops manual and show the man where are flght and duty time limitations are located, and then he asks me about the restricted minima I must comply with for the first 100hrs of flying here …I tell him. Problem is he doesnt know the answer, and gives me a lecture on something thats totally wrong… I agree and confirm I will play by their rules hoping he will tick the box FATA PASS. (I already had a fail to my name as our Operations Manual was out of date). He fluffs and farts around, sits and reviews my paperwork, gets a bit ainsy as my Indian visa doesnt say the word Employment on it…(it says Type E Visa..which to me means employment), but I am saved as I have been registered as a foreign resident and have my little Indian FRRO passport that says I can stay here. They then discover my security clearance approval paperwork has gone amiss from my file…so some more runnning around happens, and by 6.45pm we are done. Phew…what a lot of BS for such a simple thing…these gods of aviation sure do know how to make their own lives hard!