Parliament panel finds hundreds of unworthy aircraft

New Delhi: Around 120 aircraft in India, including helicopters, are incapable of operating in hilly terrain. This is the finding of a parliamentary panel headed by CPM Rajya Sabha MP Sitaram Yechury.
The helicopter cell in the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) had set a deadline of March 2010 for all aircraft to install an Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT), a tracking device, to help in the detection and location of aircraft in distress.
This was done after a few crashes last year.
But, in a recent check before the crash of the helicopter in which former Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Dorjee Khandu died, it was found that 129 of 1,029 operating aircraft had not done so.
The rest had procured the ELT capable of operating with dual frequency (121.5 and 406 MHz). The remaining 120 had not installed the equipment, thereby violating DGCA flying norms for such machines in hilly and inaccessible areas.
Even state governments who own helicopters do not follow the guidelines issued by the Ministry of Civil Aviation.
The panel also found that VVIPs chartering helicopters were putting pilots and technical personnel under pressure to fly even in low visibility, bad weather and at nights, which are serious breaches of aviation security norms.
07/05/11 Iftikhar Gilani/Tehelka

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Categories: Safety May 2011