DGCA suspends 5 Air Pegasus pilots

NEW DELHI: Small airlines and helipads in India may be plagued with serious safety issues. Recent checks by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) have led to the suspension of five pilots of Bengaluru-based

Air Pegasus

for safety violations. The breaches include descending dangerously fast while landing their ATR aircraft, stopping of chopper flights for storing and refuelling without following required safety norms.

“We carried out a safety audit of Air Pegasus and found serious violations. Five pilots (four Indians, one foreign) have been suspended for anywhere between a week to three months and the airline’s chief of safety has been removed. The airline’s management has been warned to run his operations with utmost safety,” said a senior DGCA official.

The officials listed alleged violations like “high rate of descent during some landings when the pilots should have aborted landing and gone around”. For instance, a Bengaluru-Trivandrum flight landed at a very high rate of descent, he added. The other violations included not adhering to the duty-time limitation of crew.

On its part, an Air Pegasus spokesman said: “The suspension of pilots is due to an error of 00:55 minutes in documentation in one of our training flights. These are flights wherein the training of pilots takes place and were not commercial flights carrying Passengers. The chief pilot who made the error is no longer with the company.”

“We had a DGCA audit on April 27, 2016, which resulted in certain observations. We have taken note of the same and have taken corrective action. Being a new airline, safety would be our first priority and our emphasis would be on the same. This has been conveyed to the DGCA through our reply to them through the action taken report on this subject,” Air Pegasus said.

Another shocker awaited the DGCA team which went to inspect the Sahastradhara helipad near Dehradun from where choppers operate for the Char Dham (Yamnotri, Gangotri, Badrinath and Kedarnath) yatra.

“We found people smoking near where fuel was kept, car batteries being used for refuelling and safety procedure not being followed during refuelling. Helicopter operations from Sahastradhara have been stopped till these deficiencies are removed. But to ensure that pilgrims do not suffer, chopper operations will happen from Dehradun’s Jolly Grant Airport,” the official said.

The regulator also temporarily halted chopper operations from Sirsi and Phata in Garhwal for certain operators till they removed their deficiencies.