Amid frequent incidents of malfunctions in several flights, Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia recently chaired a one-on-one meeting with heads of airline companies. During the meeting, he reviewed flight safety norms. Further, each airline has been instructed to take steps at all levels to enhance security surveillance.
This comes a day after the civil aviation minister chaired a high-level meeting with the senior officials of the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) and the Directorate General Civil Aviation (DGCA) to discuss the safety issues that have been reported to the ministry in the past few weeks. Scindia told the officials to ensure that “there is no compromise with passengers’ safety,” and that “safety is paramount”.
Several mishaps have come to light off late with two being on Sunday itself as technical miscarriages were reported on two separate flights. In the first incident, a Sharjah-Hyderabad flight of IndiGo was diverted to Karachi, in a precautionary measure after a defect was observed in one of the engines.
A day before, on Saturday, Air India Express’s Calicut-Dubai flight was diverted to Muscat after a burning smell was reported from cabin mid-flight. Moreover, budget carriers IndiGo and SpiceJet are under the scanner of DGCA and MoCA due to reported safety-related incidents in the recent past. IndiGo’s Delhi-Vadodra flight was diverted to Jaipur as a precautionary measure on July 14. This was after vibrations were observed for a second in the engines of the aircraft.
In yet another incident, a live bird was found in the glove compartment on the co-pilot’s side inside the cockpit of a mid-air Air India Express Bahrain-Kochi flight on July 15. The incident is also being investigated by the DGCA
