Air India
“More parts of the aircraft could have come off had it continued to cruise for a bit longer, endangering the lives of passengers,” said VK Kukar, a former Air India Pilot.
The pilot and the co-pilot have been taken off duty till an investigation by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, the aviation regulator, is completed.
Kukar said pilots in such a situation may not necessarily feel the impact or receive a warning from the instrumentation of the plane brushing against or hitting an object.
The alertness of airport workers becomes crucial in such cases. Trichy airport workers found that a part of the perimeter wall had collapsed and antennas for the Instrument Landing System (ILS) broken.
The ILS is a crucial system of sensors and transmitters that are installed in aircraft and at runways which helps planes line up and land, easily the most challenging part of a flight.
Once the ground damage was spotted, air traffic control passed on the message to counterparts in Mumbai as flight IX611 had by then entered the Mumbai airspace. It was then that a message to turn around was relayed to the crew.
“The aircraft was in constant touch with us when it was in our airspace. The pilot was asked to make an emergency landing as a precautionary measure,” a Mumbai Air Traffic Control (ATC) official said.
Kukar said the damage could have been limited to the outer layer. “The pilots would otherwise have gotten warnings if there was any problem in closing the landing gear and putting it back. There have been some incidents globally where planes have flown with a damaged underbelly,” he said. The risk of fire was low because fuel is stored in the wings, he explained.
Friday’s i ncident comes exactly three weeks after 30 people on a Jet Airways flight were left with injuries following a sudden drop in cabin pressure. The incident apparently took place because the pilots forgot to activate key systems needed to pressurise the cabin.
A member of the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau said the manufacturer, Boeing, will be called for an investigation into Friday’s incident and, since it is the first of its kind in India, appropriate safety instructions will be issued once the inquiry is completed.
Civil aviation minister Suresh Prabhu said that he had spoken to senior officials and directed them to conduct a high-level inquiry.
“In a recent review on airline safety, I have ordered to put in place a third-party professional organisation to look into various safety aspects. In order to have continuous attention towards air safety, I have also ordered officials to put in place a regular “safety compliance report” of all airlines”, he said in a series of tweets. “Safety of passengers is of paramount importance for us. We will take all that’s required to put safety on top of aviation agenda. Growth can’t be at the expense of safety,” he added. reserved 80% for Delhiites and rest for others,” Jain said.
According to the notification, patients possessing a voter ID Card of Delhi are put in one compartment and patients who do not have such identification classified as non-delhi patients. For the two categories of patients, different standards and processes are applied for obtaining facilities for treatment in the OPD.
Non-resident patients were given a light blue coloured OPD card and free medicines, pharmacy access and diagnostic facilities, both pathological and radiological, were denied. Exclusive registration and medicine dispensing counters were set up for the Delhi residents.
The court said the state cannot avoid or shirk its constitutional obligation on account of financial constraints or nonavailability of facilities.
“If we analyse the justification given by the state government in the present case, it would be seen that the state is shirking away from discharging its constitutional obligation and liability by contending lack of facilities like infrastructure, manpower and law and order situation created by outburst of population, the number of patients coming to the hospital for treatment,” it said.
The court said the classification was based on no reasonable justification except on the basis of the residence of a person. It also said the constitution guarantees equality before the law and confers equal protection on every citizen, adding that no citizen shall be discriminated against on the basis of place of birth.
“Health care facility and its access to a citizen is a right available under the Constitution,” the court said.
The Delhi unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party welcomed the ruling. “This was a completely discriminatory and inhuman diktat issued by the Delhi government and it deprived an ordinary citizen of India of the right to equality, life and good health. We believe that this was yet another conspiracy by the AAP government to create a divide between the people of this country,” said BJP national spokesperson Aman Sinha.