Near miss: AI co-pilot may not have got sleep

Mumbai: The co-pilot of the Air India flight — which started on its take-off simultaneously with a Jet flight from Mumbai airport's cross-runways
last Sunday — was asked to fly six hours 45 minutes before his scheduled reporting time, a probe into the near-miss has revealed. Airlines usually inform pilots and co-pilots about their assignments at least 12 hours before they fly.
The co-pilot was intimated that he would have to take off at 7.45am on Sunday only late on Saturday night, senior officials quoted from an internal inquiry report. The report has been submitted to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
The co-pilot was not initially slotted to fly on Sunday morning, when the near-miss happened, officials said; nor was he part of the stand-by crew, which usually would be requisitioned if any crew member failed to report for duty. So he might not have been prepared for an early-morning assignment last Sunday and might not have got adequate rest before flying, officials admitted.
The co-pilot in the AI flight cockpit was the Pilot Not Flying (PNF) and would have been in charge of maintaining radio communication with the Air Traffic Control (ATC), officials said. ''The commander (Pilot Flying) usually flies the aircraft and the PNF keeps radio communication and checks the systems in the aircraft,'' a senior airline commander told TOI. ''It is usually the co-pilot who takes the take-off command from the air traffic control and then reads it back verbatim for confirmation,'' the commander said, adding it was a ''critical flying job''.
Officials said the DGCA probe into the incident might not be over yet but the report compiled by the AI's air-safety department mentioned that the co-pilot was told to fly the AI flight 348 from Mumbai to Shanghai via Delhi at 11.30 pm on Saturday night; and that would be barely 6 hours 45 minutes before his reporting time, which was 6.15am on Sunday. Airline usually inform pilots about their duty at least 12 hours in advance, which ensures that the crew get adequate rest before duty.
The near-miss — and the chain of events leading up to it — point to a disregard of minimum safety practices, say experts.
07/06/09 Chinmayi Shalya/Times of India

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Categories: Air India - International Jun 2009, Airports Jun 2009, Jet Airways Jun 2009, NACIL Jun 2009, Safety Jun 2009