New Delhi: The Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) pulled up Air India in March for failure in timely changing engine parts of an Airbus A320 as directed by the European Union's aviation safety agency. The airlines also forged documents to show compliance, which made the aviation watchdog of the country reprimand it, Reuters reported.
It seems the airline authorities were committing serious mismanagement in its operations and deadly security lapses, as per reports that surfaced recently. The series of news reports over the said lapses surfaced after the deadly Ahmedabad crash that killed 242 passengers and crew onboard, along with some on the ground. There was a report that within hours after the crash, another Air India flight suddenly lost an altitude of 900 feet shortly after take-off and nearly crashed.
On June 23, the DGCI conducted a detailed audit at Air India's main base in Gurugram that will cover operations, flight scheduling, rostering and various other areas, a source told news agency PTI.
A safety audit of Air India’s fleet by the agency has highlighted repeated maintenance lapses and poor defect rectification.
Over the fresh report of DGCA reprimanding the airlines, Air India has told Reuters that it acknowledged the error to DGCA and undertook remedial action and preventive measures.
Reuters reports that the European agency raised the engine issue on March 18, which is months before the Ahmedabad crash. DGCA warned the company of breaching rules for flying three among its fleet with overdue checks on escape slides. In June, it had warned of “serious violations” of pilot duty timings.