Leaking plane toilet annoys DGCA

New Delhi: Your childhood fears about leaking plane toilets have come true. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) recently went on a surprise visit to IGI to check the airworthiness of planes and overall airport safety. The underbelly of a domestic airline’s, Airbus A-320, was found to be covered with blue paint.
A surprised DGCA team conducted investigation and found that the front toilet’s blue flush fluid was leaking and must have got stuck (frozen, rather) when the plane was flying and then got evenly spread out on the bottom with air flow.
"We found that the toilet was improperly serviced and the underbelly from nose to empennage (end) had a coating of blue fluid," said an official. The DGCA has asked the airline to explain this improper maintenance.
In fact, the team found general slackness among most organizations on need to attend to leaks whether from toilet in this case or the more common hydraulic leaks that were found in some other planes. Despite posing a serious safety hazard, some airlines were not found attending to hydraulic leaks urgently.
Two planes of as many airlines were found to be undergoing maintenance work without the engineer being present at site. Other important parts like landing gear safety pins were found to be totally faded in a Boeing 737 of a private airline. All these just pointed to one fact — many airlines don’t pay attention to servicing of their aircraft and maintenance of ground handling equipment.
The team also found that despite a number of lives being lost in accidents on operational area side, the problem of congestion and rash driving still existed at IGI.
14/05/08 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India

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Categories: Safety May 2008