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Pilots’ body tells Air India management after two planes were grounded for technical troubles

The Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) has written to Air India management that its pilots would fly only snag-free aircraft.

The ICPA stand came after two planes were grounded on technical grounds. "ICPA takes a pledge to ensure the safety and security of flying passengers by operating aircraft which are completely snag free," ICPA President Captain A S Bhinder stated in a letter.

On Wednesday, technical troubles led to an Air India plane being grounded and forced another to make a priority landing at Delhi airport. Pilots of Pune-bound flight AI-849, which was ready for take-off with 122 people on board, found during routine checks that the flight management and guidance systems were faulty and the auto-pilot was non-functional, airport sources said. The pilots, Commander Captain Jalaj Vats and co-pilot Captain Amit Tyagi, refused to fly the faulty Airbus A-320 and informed the airline officials, who asked them to change the aircraft.

After a delay of about two-and-a-half hours, they got an aircraft that had just been thoroughly checked. When they took off for Pune, the aircraft’s landing gear got jammed while being retracted. A fault also occurred in the plane’s auto-pilot and auto-thrust system which control the power of the engines and the flight director, they said. Sensing the situation, the pilots decided to return to Delhi and sought permission for priority landing from the air traffic control.

’Won’t fly to Kabul’
A section of Air India pilots have threatened not to operate flights to Kabul citing safety and security concerns. The Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA), representing over 800 pilots of Air India, has asked the management to clarify nine issues relating to the airport in the capital of strife-torn Afghanistan, which, they claimed, were directly affecting the safety of flight operations there.
The ICPA sought clarifications in a letter to the management. This was its second letter after the one in February last year in which it had made the same demand. The pilots’ body claimed that "no special procedure for unlawful interference", which includes hijack, has been devised for operating to cities like Kabul over a decade after the 1999 hijack of Indian Airlines’ flight IC-814 to Kandahar. While the quality of air traffic control was poor, the airport’s runway and taxiway surfaces were of poor quality and had no markings, the ICPA claimed.