Air India and its two top executives were fined Rs 99 lakh by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Friday for using unqualified pilots on a flight last month. “Significant safety ramifications” were attributed to the occurrence by the authority.
According to DGCA, the incident happened on or around July 10 when a trainee pilot and a non-trainer pilot together flew an airline commercial flight. The safety regulations were broken by this.
The director general and conservator of aviation (DGCA) fined Air India Rs 90 lakh, its director of operations Rs 6 lakh, and its director of training Rs 3 lakh. “In addition, the concerned pilot has been cautioned to avoid similar incidents in the future. According to the regulator, Air India’s flight, which was piloted by a non-trainer line captain and a non-line-released first officer, was a serious scheduling incident with potentially serious safety implications.
Air India voluntarily submitted a report on the incident to the DGCA on July 10. “After learning about this event, the regulator conducted thorough inspections into Air India’s operations, which included reviewing all relevant documentation and performing a spot check of the airline’s scheduling facility. According to the DGCA, “an investigation initially indicated that several post holders and staff had multiple infractions against regulatory provisions, which could have a major impact on safety.”
On July 22, show cause notes were sent for this occurrence to the airline management and the pilot-in-command of the flight. “The worried party’s response did not offer a compelling enough explanation. As a result, the regulator stated, “DGCA has imposed the above penalty and initiated enforcement action in terms of provisions of the extant rules/regulations.”
DGCA takes several actions against Air India.
The regulator has become enraged with the airline on several occasions in the last few years. Following two flights that were “inordinately delayed” and where passengers complained of “insufficient” cabin cooling, the DGCA declared in May that Air India, which is owned by the Tata group, is “time and again” failing to provide for the needs of its customers.
Air India was fined Rs 80 lakh by the DGCA in March for breaking the flight duty time limitation (FDTL) regulations, which are designed to make sure pilots get enough sleep to avoid fatigue-related mishaps at work.
Following the death of an elderly passenger following a heart attack in February, the DGCA fined Air India Rs 30 lakh. Because the airline was unable to deliver the requested wheelchair, the passenger decided to walk from the aeroplane to the terminal, which resulted in the fatal tragedy that occurred minutes later.
Air India was fined Rs 30 lakh in January for failing to roster enough qualified pilots to do CAT-III (poor visibility) landings. Major airports in India use the CAT-III instrument landing system, which enables pilots to land their aircraft in conditions as low as 50 meters of visibility. To operate this technology, though, a pilot needs to be trained. Due to heavy fog in January, hundreds of aircraft nationwide experienced delays or cancellations.
The DGCA suspended two Air India pilots in June 2023 for admitting an unauthorised person in the cockpit on June 3 during the airline’s Chandigarh-Leh flight: a captain for a year and a co-pilot for a month.
On February 27, 2023, a similar event happened on the airline’s flight from Delhi to Dubai, where the captain let a female companion into the cockpit. In April 2023, the DGCA issued a three-month suspension to the captain and issued a warning to the co-pilot for not acting assertively enough to stop the infraction.
The civil aviation regulator penalised Air India ~30 lakh in January 2023 for managing an incident on a trip from New York to Delhi where a man urinated on a female co-passenger. It penalised the airline ~10 lakh in June 2022 for failing to provide the necessary compensation to ticket holders who were turned away from boarding.