This incident comes after an Air India pilots' body urged DGCA to look into the issue of deployment of a section of its "stressed" junior pilots in the cockpit, days after the Germanwings pane crash.
After the Germanwings crash raised flags about pilots' mental wellbeing, an incident of a scuffle between an Air India pilot and his co-pilot in the cockpit has come to light.
According to an English daily, an Air India co-pilot got into an argument and beat up the captain in AI 611 cockpit before the Airbus A-320 was set to take off for Delhi. The co-pilot is known for this kind of behaviour among other senior pilots, the report says.
The altercation happened when the pilot asked the co-pilot to write down critical pre-departure figures such as the number of passengers, take of weight, fuel uptake etc. The co-pilot took offence to this and hit the pilot. The captain however reported the incident only after the flight reached its destination and not earlier as it would have led to the flight to get cancelled.
The pilots have been derostered for now, says a news channel report. However according to the channel AI head has denied that there was any physical altercation.
This incident comes after an Air India pilots' body urged DGCA to look into the issue of deployment of a section of its "stressed" junior pilots in the cockpit, days after the Germanwings pane crash.
Stating that some 30-odd co-pilots were being "forced to work overtime" without any remuneration, the Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA), in a letter to the aviation regulator alleged on Monday that "putting these highly-stressed and financially over-burdened co-pilots in the same cockpit... is a perfect recipe for disaster."
CPA represents the narrow-body Airbus A320 pilots in the airline. This is the second time in the last 10 days that ICPA has red-flagged safety concerns in Air India to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). Earlier, it had asked DGCA to ground the airline's 26-year -old A-320 fleet citing safety concerns.
The fresh communication to the regulator comes following the action of Andreas Lubitz, co-pilot of the Germanwings flight who last week crashed the Airbus A320 plane into the French Alps killing himself and 149 others.
With agency inputs
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