Mumbai: A day after the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation said it would de-roster pilots who had flown to the Goa airport under unsafe conditions in the first week of April, a section of Air India pilots announced today that they would no longer be flying to Kabul as flying conditions were unsafe there. Air India is the only airline that operates to Kabul and has six flights a week from Delhi. An Air India spokesperson did not comment on the pilot union ICPA’s notice to its pilots.
“If the DGCA is going to pull up pilots for flying in unsafe conditions, then why should we put the lives of our pilots and the passengers at risk. The fact is that Kabul is a substandard airfield,” said Captain Rishab Kapur, General Secretary of the Indian Commercial Pilots Association. Kabul is a class G airspace, which pilots say means pilots are essentially on their own. Every aircraft has anti-collision alarm called the TCAS which warns pilots in case of a potential collision by alerting them with traffic advisories (TA) or resolution advisories (RA).
“On every second flight, we get a traffic advisory or a resolutionary advisory but as the air traffic control is quite poor we have to manage advisories on our own,” said a pilot on the condition of annomity. A TA is when an aircraft is approximately 40 seconds away from collision with another aircraft, while an RA is when an aircraft is approximately 25 seconds away from collision with another aircraft. In India, pilots have to face an inquiry in case of a TA or an RA alert.
15/04/11 Indian Express
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