Two AI pilots derostered for hard landing before DGCA note

New Delhi: Just three days before the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) asked airlines not to judge a good landing by how soft it has been, Air India grounded two pilots of the erstwhile Indian Airlines for a hard landing of an Airbus A319. Captain R S Ottal, a former office bearer of IA’s union, Indian Commercial Pilots’ Association, was one of the pilots who flew the aircraft from Mumbai to Rajkot last Saturday (May 29).
This happened exactly a week after the Mangalore crash, where pilots of the ill-fated plane overshot the runway, possibly in an attempt to make a soft landing by gliding over precious airstrip of the table-top runway.
Speaking about the Mumbai-Rajkot flight, an airline spokesperson said: ‘‘They made a landing of 1.9G on the long Rajkot runway, following which some passengers complained of discomfort and inconvenience. The two pilots have been derostered pending investigation.’’
Airlines monitor landings by a measure of the acceleration constant for gravity (G). Landings over 1.5G (where 1G indicates the rate of fall under normal gravity) are rated hard. The landing at 1.9G was detected by the aircraft’s L-15 computer printout and also reported by the pilot on arrival.
The A319 landed in Rajkot at 1.9G, while Airbus says it has a permissible landing limit of 2.6G.
05/06/10 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Jun 2010, Safety Jun 2010