A senior official of Indian Airlines has moved the Calcutta High Court against the company alleging that it has violated safety norms in operating flights to the Mizoram state capital Aizawl.
KOLKATA: A senior official of Indian Airlines has moved the Calcutta High Court against the company alleging that it has violated safety norms in operating flights to the Mizoram state capital Aizawl.
Deputy General Manager (Operations) and a pilot of executive cadre Hari Shankar Mishra has moved the high court seeking an enquiry into the alleged violation of safety norms in flight operations from Kolkata to Lengpui airport in Aizawl between January one, 2006 and June five, 2006.
Mishra has sought action against the alleged violation, whereby Airbus 319 flights were operated to and fro Lengpui without proper Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), his lawyer V N Dwivedi claimed.
The matter was moved before the court of Justice Dipankar Dutta of Calcutta High Court, who has asked the petitioner to get it listed in the appellate side as many of the respondents were from outside West Bengal, as a technical requirement.
The matter is likely to come up for hearing again later this month, Dwivedi said.
Mishra, assigned to the job of flight safety (emergency procedure relating to hijacking etc), stated in his petition that the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) mandates formulation of SOP before flights to a new destination and that crew members must be trained in accordance with the SOP.
Dwivedi claimed that in violation of the requirements, the airline had started operation of a new flight to Lengpui, a hilly terrain airport, without any SOP and sometimes with co-pilots unqualified for the flights.
The counsel claimed that executive pilots like the petitioner had been forced to operate "unsafe flights" since January 12, 2006, firstly without any SOP and later with an ambiguous SOP.
He claimed that after operating flights for 18 days without any SOP, an SOP was received in Kolkata on January 19, 2006. "The SOP was found to be ambiguous, but without removing the ambiguity, operation of the flights went on," Dwivedi said.
The petitioner, who joined the airline in 1988 as second officer, became a pilot of commander grade in 1998 before being promoted as DGM (operations) in June, 2005.
He claimed that the association of pilots (Indian Commercial Pilots Association) complained about ambiguity of the SOP and had, through a letter dated May 20, 2006, requested the general manager (operations) not to roster their member pilots unless the ambiguity was removed.
Airline sources, when contacted, claimed that there had been no violation of safety norms and that only a clarification of some points in the SOP had been sought by ICPA and that these were provided.
The stalemate ended on June five, when the amended SOP was received and the ICPA affiliated pilots were again rostered to operate the Kolkata-Lengpui flights.
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