DGCA FTO Ranking 2026: How Flying Schools Are Graded and What Moves Your Grade
SkyManager Team · Published 2026-10-10
Two editions of DGCA's flying school rankings are out, one school has reached Category A, and seven slipped from B to C. Here is how the score is built and which parts an FTO can move before the next edition.
A report card that is published twice a year
On 1 October 2025, DGCA published its first ranking of India's flying training organisations. No school made Category A+ or A. Thirteen landed in Category B and twenty-two in Category C.
The second edition, released by Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu on 24 April 2026, covered 35 DGCA-approved FTOs. This time one school, Avyanna Aviation, reached Category A, the first FTO to do so in either edition. Category B grew to 17 schools and Category C fell to 17.
The headline looks like steady improvement. The detail is more volatile: seven schools that held Category B in October 2025 dropped to Category C in April 2026, while IGRUA moved the other way, from C to B.
7 — Schools that fell from Category B to C between editions. A grade is not a permanent badge. Every edition re-scores the previous twelve months.
The framework is meant to refresh every six months, around 1 April and 1 October. At the time of writing we had not seen a third edition published, but whenever it lands, the data behind it is already fixed. The question for every FTO is what goes into the next one.
How the score is built
| Parameter | Weight | What DGCA looks at |
|---|---|---|
| Operational aspects | 40% | Student-to-aircraft and student-to-instructor ratios, fleet size and types, simulators, aircraft utilisation |
| FTO performance | 20% | Average time for students to complete 175 flying hours (12 months earns full marks) |
| Safety standards | 20% | Accidents and incidents in the previous 12 months, with a penalty for every unreported case |
| Compliance standards | 10% | Level-I findings from DGCA inspections and breath-analyser positives |
| Assistance to students | 10% | Grievance redressal, scholarships, placement support, fee transparency, student feedback |
The categories are A+ at 85% and above, A from 70%, B from 50%, and C below 50%. A school in Category C gets a DGCA notice asking it to analyse its performance and take corrective action.
Where an FTO can actually gain points
Operations: 40% of the score is a capacity question
Student-to-aircraft and student-to-instructor ratios are the biggest single block, and they are entirely about planning. A school that enrols ahead of its fleet and roster loses points twice: the ratios look bad, and the extra students drag down the completion time measured in the performance block.
The fix is not always more aircraft. It is knowing your real numbers. That means serviceable aircraft by day rather than fleet on paper, instructor hours available after duty limits, and how many sorties per day the fleet actually flies. Schools that track utilisation weekly can see a ratio problem coming a term before it shows up in a ranking.
Performance: the 175-hour clock
Full marks go to schools whose students finish 175 hours in 12 months. Every week lost to a grounded aircraft, an unplanned instructor absence or a weather backlog lengthens the average. Look at where your students' calendar time actually goes. In most schools, the gaps are between sorties rather than in the sorties themselves.
Safety: reporting is part of the score
The safety block counts accidents and incidents, and it penalises unreported cases. A school that under-reports is taking a bigger risk than one that reports honestly. A working occurrence-reporting system, with every report logged, investigated and closed, is both a safety practice and ranking protection.
Compliance: inspection findings are predictable
Level-I findings tend to cluster around the same themes: records that don't reconcile, expired documents, maintenance entries that don't match flying logs. A monthly internal audit against the same checklist an inspector would use catches most of them before the inspector does.
What the ranking does not measure
The ranking has limits. It does not directly capture instructor quality, current aircraft serviceability, local weather, ground school quality or where graduates end up. Students and airline cadet programmes look at those things anyway. A good grade gets a school onto the shortlist, and the rest of the operation has to hold up from there.
The schools that move up will be the ones that measure
Most of the ranking parameters are things a well-run school already tracks: ratios, utilisation, completion times, occurrences, findings. Our flight school software checklist maps each one to what your systems should record. The difference between schools that improve and schools that slip is often whether those numbers live in one system that someone reviews weekly, or are rebuilt from registers when DGCA asks for them.
Sources:The Week, 25 April 2026 · Aerogenesis: DGCA FTO Ranking April 2026 analysis · ANI: first ranking, October 2025
Cover photo: Cessna 172N Skyhawk D-ENDR by Huhu Uet, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0, cropped.
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