Lapses leading to fire are a shocker

New Delhi: The shocking incident of an Air India Boeing 747 aircraft catching fire due to fuel leakage at Mumbai airport on Friday has set alarm bells ringing in the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) as the aircraft was given an airworthiness certificate just three days earlier.
The incident has also exposed the airline's shoddy maintenance.
The fuel leakage faults could be due to bursting of joints on the fuel supply line connecting engines and the fuel tank. "The Pilot Defect Report (PDR) will tell everything about the defects in the aircraft," said a source.
Airline sources say that three different aircraft were readied for the AI flight bound for Riyadh and all of them developed faults. The flight was scheduled to take off at 1am, then 5am and finally 10am.
The DGCA team has started investigation and grounded the pilots as well as the aircraft engineer involved in giving final clearance. The investigators are also looking at the pilots' role. Sources said the pilots were inattentive to the various indicators for fuel, fire and smoke. When the aircraft was taxiing towards the runway, another AI pilot had noticed the leak and tried to contact the Boeing 747 pilot but he could not contact him."This pilot tried establishing contact with the Boeing pilots in a special frequency which is exclusive for the airline. But it was later found that the Boeing pilots had turned the volume low," said a source.
Luckily, an airport employee in a jeep also spotted the fuel trickling out of the aircraft wing and alerted the control tower, which then instructed the Boeing pilots to switch off the engine.
06/09/09 Yogesh Kumar/Naveeta Singh/Daily News & Analysis

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Categories: Air India - International Sep 2009, Airports Sep 2009, NACIL Sep 2009, Safety Sep 2009