DGCA’s minimum crew guidelines, poor training hurdles to flight safety

The manner in which the Jet Airways cabin crew handled the emergency evacuation of passengers on the Mumbai-Chennai flight on Friday has highlighted two major drawbacks in the aviation industry.

One, the minimum cabin crew guidelines set by Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) clearly make it difficult to handle emergency situations.

Two, the training imparted to the cabin crew to handle such situations is far from perfect.

Passengers on that flight have reported that the crew was as panicky as they were.

“In order to cut down their costs, airlines are hiring cheap manpower which is not properly trained nor has good communication skills,” said a captain from another private airline.

“I remember when there was an incident of a passenger death on-board, I asked a cabin crew member to give him CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation), but he came back and said the passenger hadn’t responded.

I asked him what he meant by CPR, to which he said ‘mouth-to-mouth respiration’. I was stunned,” he said.

The minimum crew guidelines aren’t helping matters either. The Mumbai-Chennai Jet Airways Boeing 737 aircraft, whose left engine allegedly caught fire on August 27, has six doors including two emergency exits, but had four crew members to man them.

“Aircrafts like Airbus 310, A 319, Boeing 737 with six doors are often operated with just four crew members. In such cases the over-wing exits are often left unmanned,” said a senior crew member from Air India.

DGCA has now called for a meeting of the heads of training of all airlines to review the training procedures of cabin and flight crews, particularly in emergency and evacuation procedures.