The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has decided to conduct a quarterly safety audit of airside operations of all airports in order to check the rise in ground incidents and regulate the airside activities. The audit will commence after two months.

Pointing out to the need for preventive measures due to the recent spike in ground incidents across airports, the regulator has told the operators that it has developed a detailed checklist to benchmark safety standards for the operations on the airside.

The regulator will audit an airport's ground facilities, its turnaround and general safety procedures and the movement of vehicles in the airside.

Underground facilities, ground servicing equipment, passenger boarding bridges condition of the apron, marking and lighting, availability of foreign object dustbin bins will be checked. In order to regulate the movement of vehicles in the airside, fitness of vehicles and drivers and their knowledge with regard to geography of aerodrome, aerodrome signs, marking, lighting, radiotelephony operating procedure, terms and phrases used in airside operations, adequate training of driving or operating the relevant vehicles, and the training of employees working at airside will be checked.

The checklist also includes aircraft turnaround and general safety procedures such as aircraft fuelling, pushback, towing, marshalling, mooring, handling of arrival and departure of aircraft.

The move comes in the background of a rise in ground incidents across airports. Delhi, which has the country's busiest airport, has witnessed seven ground incidents since January. While in two of these cases, engines of the aircraft were hit by the ground power unit, it was hit by a toilet cart in another. Mumbai has also seen such incidents recently whereby once an aircraft was hit by a ground tractor. In another incident, an aircraft was hit by a flying container during strong winds as the container was not properly tied.

Such incidents have been reported in Hyderabad, Cochin, Chennai, Trichy, Rajkot as well among other airports.

"As Indian airports are getting busier in view of the exponential growth in civil Aviation, the number of ground incidents involving aircraft are also increasing.....In order to curb such incidents, DGCA has developed a detailed checklist to benchmark safety standards on the airside of the airport," the regulator has said in its order.