To put this in perspective, a Boeing 737 aircraft should typically have 1,300-1,500 kg 'holding' fuel for 30 minutes at the time of landing.

New Delhi: Jet Airways' fuel uplift policy has come under the DGCA scanner after an incident involving a Doha-Kochi flight on 18 August which landed after six failed attempts and then with barely 270 kg fuel left. The flight was to land at Kochi but finally landed at Thiruvananthapuram after declaring 'Mayday' which is aviation jargon for dangerously low fuel.

To put this in perspective, a Boeing 737 aircraft should typically have 1,300-1,500 kg 'holding' fuel for 30 minutes at the time of landing. If the pilots eat into this holding fuel, which is absolutely critical to a flight landing safely, then this is termed a safety violation.

So 9W555 landed when it had less than a fifth of this fuel quantity. A DGCA official explained that in just 10 minutes of taxiing, a Boeing 737 burns about 240 kg of fuel.

Both the pilots on this flight have also been suspended and the incident referred to Ministry of Civil Aviation's aircraft accident investigation bureau. The flight had 150 passengers including eight crew members on board.

"The pilots' first alternative should have been the Thiruvananthapuram airport. When it landed on the seventh attempt, the aircraft was left with only 270 kg of fuel. We need to find whether they were trying to save cost by taking less fuel," said a senior DGCA official.

The official said that the pilots did three "go arounds" which means they tried to land three times at Kochi but the aircraft was taken back up each time as pilots could not sight the runway due to bad weather owing to heavy rains.

In their flight plan, the pilots mentioned Bangalore as the alternate airport when ideally Thiruvananthapuram should have been the alternate since it is closer. The DGCA will also examine why the pilots did not go on to Bangalore after the first go around at Kochi. There were three more go arounds at Thiruvananthapuram before the flight finally landed, putting passengers' lives at risk.