Mistake by crew, glitch hit Rahul’s flight: Report

According to the report, “the crew only realized (this had happened) when the bank angle warning came at 45 degree i.e after 13 seconds of autopilot disengagement”. The bank angle warning comes on when the aircraft’s tilt exceeds a certain angle. The report further states that “the bank angle kept on increasing with altitude loss and reached a maximum of 64.95 degrees i.e 15 seconds after the auto pilot disengagement.”

By then, the aircraft had also lost height by 735 ft . The crew reacted and “the aircraft finally recovered to straight and level flight after 24 seconds from the autopilot disengagement,” the DGCA report said, adding that the “lack of situational awareness” by the crew was a contributory factor for the incident.

According to a pilot with a leading airline who asked not to be identified, the right angle for a small plane such as the one Gandhi was on is 30 degree and the warning must have been set at 45 degree.

“The pilot should have noticed on screen the yaw damper warning; it was probably the yaw failure which leads to tripping of auto plot. The aircraft was not only tilting but was also going down. However, since they were cruising at a decent height, they managed to rectify the mistake,” added this person. The aircraft was at around 41,000 ft when the incident happened.

“From the above it is inferred that the crew actions were slightly delayed to take the corrective actions,” the DGCA report said.

“Does the report not virtually say that there was serious possibility of an imminent accident? Good fortune, good luck and God saved it. An accident in this situation means almost certain death,” Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said in response to the report.

The Hyderabad ATC was monitoring plane on radar and noticed descend of aircraft and immediately called up VT-AVH . The pilot intimated that he had descended due to technical reasons and later informed ATC that the autopilot had tripped. When the aircraft banked to the right and descended the pilot did not declare any emergency to Hyderabad controller.