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Case filed against pilots
IN A new turn to the crash-landing of trainer aircraft in a residential area, the police on Monday registered a criminal case against two pilots. Anand Pal, whose house got damaged in course of crash-landing, registered the case with the Rail Bazaar police. The pilots?Capt Rajan Kumar Ray and Capt Vijay Kumar were charged with negligence and endangering human lives.
Feasibility of engine not tested
IN A new turn to the crash-landing of trainer aircraft in a residential area, the police on Monday registered a criminal case against two pilots.
Anand Pal, whose house got damaged in course of crash-landing, registered the case with the Rail Bazaar police. The pilots—Capt Rajan Kumar Ray and Capt Vijay Kumar were charged with negligence and endangering human lives.
The case was registered when the reports questioning fitness of aircraft surfaced rapidly. It’s learnt that the aircraft was procured from a US-based flying club that hadn’t been using it for long.
The Garg Aviation that had lost an aircraft in another crash at Maharajpur was desperate to make up for the shortfall of any aircraft.
This Cessna-152 was fitted with an overhauled engine bought from Delhi Flying Club (DFC).
The feasibility of engine in air was never tested by the Garg Aviation even following its installation. It is still unclear whether a fitness certificate was obtained for this aircraft. The directors of Garg Aviations are not forthcoming on this line.
The Sunday sortie, in fact, was the first for testing purpose and experts said the aircraft should have been flown towards non-residential pockets such as in trans-Gangetic stretch instead of residential areas.
This would have ideal way to test the engine but standard protocol wasn’t followed either by Garg Aviation or the pilots, said the sources.
Initial reports suggest that seconds after the take off, engine struggled and stopped when the aircraft was in an ascending mode. Now the investigation by the air safety team of the Director General Civil Aviations is focused on the engine condition. The team that arrived in a hush hush way early this morning examined the wreckage and sought the account of the two pilots.
The engine would be sent to R and D wing of the DGCA in New Delhi for the bench testing. The team members suspect that engine quality was responsible for the mishap against the earlier line of pilot error floated by the Garg Aviations.
Meanwhile, the pilots left for Delhi as well to get their statements recorded. Garg Aviations MD Vijay Garg is also accompanying the team.
One of two directors of the company Chetan Gupta said logical conclusion could be possible only when the DGCA conducted the investigation. “The only silverline for us is no one was hurt,” he said. The investigating officer in the case, Hanuman Pandey said the DGCA was also being written to provide a copy of its technical investigations.
The case was registered under Sections 287, 337, 338 and section 11 of Aircraft Act.
