Crew reacted late to snag in Rahul’s flight, says report
NEWDELHI: A Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) investigation report released Friday blamed an error in the Flight Control Computer and a delay by the crew in dealing with the situation for the problems encountered by a chartered flight ferrying Congress president Rahul Gandhi to Hubbali in Karnataka. The investigation was ordered after the Congress said at the time that it suspected sabotage.
On April 26, in the middle of the campaign for the Karnataka assembly elections, Gandhi took off from New Delhi for Hubbali. One and a half hours later, his chartered flight faced a technical snag and Gandhi, in his own words said later that he thought “it’s all over”. After that incident Gandhi decided to visit Kailash Mansarovar, for which he left on Friday.
The DGCA report, released on Friday, blamed the pilot for reacting late after the auto-pilot tripped, creating “panic and scare for the passengers in the cabin”.
The flight data recorder analysed by DGCA confirmed that the Ligare Aviation Falcon 2000 aircraft VT-AVH was cruising at 41,000 feet when the auto pilot tripped. The aircraft started tilting to the right and also lost height. The pilot took 24 seconds to control the situation, but the DGCA report said in its report that the “‘incident was survivable”.
“When the auto pilot tripped, the crew did not realize that the aircraft has gone into a bank with yaw damper failure,” the report said, referring to a part that prevents the aircraft from rolling and banking. It is mandatory that the yaw damper remain operational on certain types of aircraft flying above specified heights. The report says that this failure was likely caused by “intermittent behaviour” of Flight Control Computer 2.