Air India Safety Lapses Raise Alarm After Wrong Plane Flies To Vancouver
· Free Press Journal
Two recent incidents—the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) flagging safety lapses at Air India and the airline flying the wrong Boeing 777 to Vancouver before turning back after over seven hours—underscore that the Tata Sons-owned carrier continues to overlook serious issues, raising the spectre of another mishap.
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According to the EASA, one of the most influential aviation regulators globally, a surprise check revealed that the ratio of findings per inspection in Air India's planes reached 1.96 in January, and if the ratio had exceeded 2.0, it could have impacted the airline’s operations, followed by a ban on key European routes. These lapses were flagged as a concern with India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), which acted immediately, and the airline management managed to bring the ratio down marginally to 1.76 after carrying out the necessary checks. The report says that the agency’s inspectors check around 54 parameters, including safety equipment, emergency exits, life jackets, and valid crew licences.
The second incident is likely a product of the same lax oversight and is just as serious. Air India flight AI185, which took off from Delhi for Vancouver on March 19, had to return to base after flying for over seven hours when it was discovered that the aircraft was not cleared for operations to Canada. Flight AI185, which was supposed to be operated by a Boeing 777-300ER with the necessary approvals for Vancouver, took off instead with a 777-200LR that did not. The aircraft crossed into Chinese airspace before the mistake was realised, forcing a U-turn. These are not isolated incidents but occur with a shocking regularity, and repeated raps from the regulator have still not pushed the airline to mend its ways.
The Tata Group had announced a $400 million cabin refurbishment plan and placed record aircraft orders, but the grind of day-to-day safety and compliance appears to be lagging, with the management remaining completely clueless about how to run the airline. If these warning signs are not addressed decisively, the airline risks being seen by foreign regulators as a chronic underperformer and will lose the trust of its passengers, who will look at other options, even if it means paying a higher fare.
The airline finds itself in all sorts of trouble, and all of this is its own making. That is not the positioning Tata signed up for when it bought back the national carrier and promised to build a world-class Indian airline. The required course correction is unglamorous but urgent, and it should start at the top, even if it means letting go of those at the helm, as another domestic airline recently demonstrated.
The real test of Tata’s stewardship is no longer the size of its order book but whether it can impose global standards of safety and discipline on an airline that has lived too long with jugaad.