Servers crash during pilot licence exams

New Delhi: On day one, when over 1,000 pilots took the first online examination for the Airline Transport Pilot Licence, servers across all the seven centres in India, designated by the Director-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) crashed. Many of the examinees had to return home without submitting their answer-sheets online and with frustrated hearts at the further delay in procuring their licences. DGCA chief Bharat Bhushan had decided to move the pilot licence’s examination online in the wake of the fake licences scam that came to fore earlier this year. The online examinations were an effort to put an end to the forged mark-sheet menace. However, the hang-ups in the delivery model has disappointed the aspirants. “Within first few minutes of sitting before my system, there was a link failure and the question paper I was answering was lost. “Within an hour, the whole server crashed. Finally only five candidates could register their answers out of the 90 odd assembled there,” an aspirant who took the examination from Kolkata told Express. Senior DGCA officials, who were present on sight at all centres, were helpless and seen calling their Delhi office for further directions. “The DGCA officials were sitting on the edge and lamented all the time as to how all the work for the online exam was done in three days. Before the exam began, they kept shouting ‘don’t touch the system. They were clueless,” another aspirant revealed. 21/08/11 Mamta Todi Khaitan/ExpressBuzz