Voluntarily report on hard landing: Air India

New Delhi: National carrier Air India has finally learnt some lessons from the Mangalore crash. The airline recently asked pilots to voluntarily report hard landings so that engineering action could be taken on the aircraft body for safety while assuring them that they wouldn't be punished for not gently gliding down.
AI had some years back warned its pilots against hard landings and used to take action against them for this. The commander of the ill-fated AI Express flight that crashed last May in Mangalore had also been pulled up for hard and then an attempted soft landing in Mangalore cost him a substantial length of the runway. The Boeing 737 could neither stop not take off again safely in the remaining length of the airstrip, leading to the crash that saw 158 casualties.
The corrective action, in fact, came on May 18, 2011, -- four days before the first anniversary of the Mangalore crash - when AI's ED-flight safety, Captain Subodh Nigam, wrote a letter to all pilots. "Several hard landings have not been reported by pilots. This neglect is detrimental to safety of all concerned... It is pertinent to highlight that punitive action has never been intended/recommended for hard landings... All pilots are advised to voluntarily report hard landings for appropriate follow-up action in interest of safety."
25/07/11 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India

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Categories: Air India Jul 2011, Airports Jul 2011, Safety Jul 2011