Charter airline co doesn’t have accident-free record

At the time of going to press, Capt Anand was yet to reply to a query sent by TOI. DGCA chief B S Bhullar did not respond.

MUMBAI: A senior official of the civil aviation watchdog, DGCA , cleared two pilots of an aircraft charter company to be designated as examiners last week after a flight check that threw all norms out of the cockpit window. Seated in the passenger cabin with the director of a charter company— whose pilots were being tested — and his wife were the deputy chief flight operations inspector’s wife and his sister-in-law, holding bottles of wine.The blatant nexus between DGCA officials and aircraft operators was soon on show as the wife of the charter company’s director subsequently posted photographs of the joyride on her private Instagram account.The highly irregular flight check was carried out by Capt Pankaj Anand , DGCA deputy chief flight operations inspector (Dy CFOI), on December 4, on the Delhi-Amritsar-Delhi route. The flight was operated by two pilots of Delhi-based Air Charter Services Pvt Ltd (ACS) on board the company’s Pilatus PC12 aircraft.This paper has a copy of the passenger manifest, which shows that on board the same flight was Capt Anand’s wife Priti and his sister-in-law Sharika Anand along with an unidentified woman. The other passengers on board were Semoun Jolly, director of ACS, and his wife Dipti. Photographs with TOI show that on landing in Amritsar , the passengers visited the Golden Temple; they posed with bottles of wine on the return flight.Capt Anand had carried out what in aviation parlance is called an “examiner release check” for two pilots employed with ACS. It’s a test taken by pilots before they can be designated as examiners by the DGCA.In their new role as examiners, these two pilots of ACS can now carry out skill tests on commanders, co-pilots certified on Pilatus.ACS doesn’t have an accident-free record. In May 2011, 10 people were killed after its Pilatus PC12 met with an accident in Faridabad while operating a flight from Patna to Delhi. In March 2017, another Pilatus PC12 crashed during a Delhi-Bangkok flight, killing the pilot.“Had it not been for the exam that went on in the cockpit, it would just have been a case of four women illegally enjoying alcohol on board a domestic flight, thanks to their influential spouses.... But that was the most inconsequential of all the violations that took place on that flight,” said a highly placed source.