Zeenews Bureau
New Delhi, July 10: Air India on Friday derostered nine employees, including two pilots, for taking on board three passengers in excess of the aircraft capacity on its flight from Mumbai to Mangalore two months ago.
PR Director of Air India, Jitendra Bhargava, while confirming the development said that there was no attempt to cover up the incident.
“Air India is not trying to cover up the incident. We will do and abide by what DGCA,” said Bhargava.
“The pilots and engineer have been immediately de-roostered for allowing the extra passengers to travel beyond the permissible capacity of the aircraft,” he added.
The country’s flagship carrier Air India landed in a fresh trouble for allowing extra passengers on a fully loaded flight.
The shocking breach of safety guidelines happened on May 05, when following damage to the door of the Mumbai-Mangalore flight, IC 179, operated on a 172-seater Airbus A-321, the passengers where shifted to another aircraft.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) came to know of the serious compromise in security of the flight while it was looking into the reasons of the damage to IC 179 – which happened at the Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport when the pilot reportedly moved his aircraft while it, was still attached to the aerobridge/
The DGCA found out that three extra passengers were “accommodated” beyond the aircraft’s permissible capacity on the flight to Mangalore.
Out of the three, one woman was accommodated in the cockpit – modern aircrafts have three seats in the cabin two for the pilot and the co-pilot and one a jump seat that’s usually kept vacant -and two children were made to sit on foldable seats meant for cabin crew during take off and landing.
Generally, boarding passes are issued to passengers through a fully computerised system, which stops issuing passes once the aircraft’s permissible capacity is reached.
However, in this case the boarding passes were issued manually with the connivance of commercial department employees, which is a gross violation of aircraft safety norms and rules.
DGCA has taken a serious note of the incident as what was done by the AI crew was totally “illegal” as every airline has to declare the number of passengers it is carrying on a particular flight even it gets air borne.
Secondly, how could the pilot allow a passenger to travel with him in the cockpit?
Although, the aircraft can “theoretically” carry three more persons but in the event of an emergency, what would have the cabin crew done when they had passengers occupying their seats?
These are some tough questions which the AI management would find it tough to answer.
The DGCA can now initiate criminal proceedings against the erring employees of the airline and also penalise the airline for flouting critical security guidelines.
First Published: Friday, July 10, 2009, 11:35