Did Air India risk 250 lives with damaged aircraft?

Mumbai: What do you expect an airline’s priority to be after discovering that one of its recent flights experienced turbulence, leading to damage to the plane and injuries to passengers, and that the pilot allegedly did not inform the company or aviation regulator and instead ordered crewmembers to stay mum? Find out who leaked the information to the media. After MiD DAY’s exposé on July 24 (‘Maharaja of cover-ups’), national carrier Air India, rather than investigating the events that occurred on its Delhi-Shanghai flight earlier this month and taking action where needed, is calling crewmembers to find out who actually disclosed the episode to this newspaper.
But a far graver issue remains. The Airbus aircraft, which was operating as flight AI 348 Delhi-Shanghai on July 5 was impaired during the turbulence. Top Air India sources told this newspaper that the aircraft must have been decommissioned at Shanghai. But in reality, as the matter was not reported, the plane landed at Shanghai around 7 pm (IST) and was prepared to operate as flight AI 349 after four hours on the same day at around 11 pm. The ground engineer cleared the aircraft for take-off. The aircraft was later decommissioned after landing at Delhi on July 6. In the process, the airline potentially endangered the lives of 250 travellers.
25/07/12 MiD DAY/IBN Live

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Categories: Air India Jul 2012, Foreign Jul 2012, Safety Jul 2012