NEW DELHI: “The pilot said that he did not report the matter as he did not consider it to be an unruly act. However, the DGCA feels that the incident should have been reported in any case,” a civil aviation ministry official said.
On January 20, the regulator imposed a ₹30 lakh fine on Air India and suspended the licence of the pilot-in-command for three months over the incident on a New York-Delhi flight on November 26 last year. The aviation regulator also slapped a ₹3 lakh fine on the airline’s director of in-flight services.
Five airline associations; Indian Pilots Guild (IPG), Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA), Air India Employees unions (AIEU), All India Cabin Crew Association (AICCA) and Air Corporations Employees Union (ACEU) along with the Airline Pilots Association of India (ALPA), a union that represents pilots from across the country, also backed the pilot.
On January 24, the associations sent a joint petition to DGCA to withdraw the pilot’s suspension.
“We believe that the regulator has acted without perhaps obtaining all the facts on record. The due process of investigation has not been followed and vital steps in the investigation and enforcement have been skipped. Additionally, gaps remain in the data collected, which need to be brought to light,” the pilot and crew associations said in their petition.
Capt. Sam Thomas, president of ALPA said, “In case of any incident, the first step taken by the DGCA is to ground the pilot. At least in this case, there was nothing more the pilot could have done. Yet, after de-rostering all the crew, his licence was suspended for three months. It was based on the airline’s reply to DGCA that the pilot was suspended. The facts stated by the airline days after the incident should have been done immediately after it was highlighted by the media.”
