New Delhi: Air India's practice of 'circumventing' a basic safety rule that each flight must have as many cabin crew as the number of doors in an aircraft by declaring a perfectly fine door unserviceable and then operating with lesser-than-required airhostesses has been red flagged by the aviation regulator.
The reason for framing this rule is to ensure that in case of an emergency, there's adequate crew to facilitate passengers alighting aircraft safely from exit doors. But with Air India facing a serious crew shortage, the airline frequently resorted to declaring a door unserviceable when it had inadequate number of airhostesses for important flights.
Captain Ajay Singh, DGCA chief flight operations inspector, recently wrote a stern letter to AI with the subject being "cabin door made inoperative due to cabin crew shortage". The letter states: "It has been brought to the notice of this office that on various occasions (serviceable) cabin door was made inoperative and flights operated citing cabin crew shortage... AI is instructed to ensure that (this practice) is discontinued with immediate effect."
10/06/15 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India
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The reason for framing this rule is to ensure that in case of an emergency, there's adequate crew to facilitate passengers alighting aircraft safely from exit doors. But with Air India facing a serious crew shortage, the airline frequently resorted to declaring a door unserviceable when it had inadequate number of airhostesses for important flights.
Captain Ajay Singh, DGCA chief flight operations inspector, recently wrote a stern letter to AI with the subject being "cabin door made inoperative due to cabin crew shortage". The letter states: "It has been brought to the notice of this office that on various occasions (serviceable) cabin door was made inoperative and flights operated citing cabin crew shortage... AI is instructed to ensure that (this practice) is discontinued with immediate effect."
10/06/15 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India
