A-I pilot took off without spare oxygen

A-I spokesman S Venkat said all incidents which take place are reviewed by A-I’s Air Safety Department in the presence of DGCA representatives.‘‘The inquiry in this case has been conducted and a report would be shortly presented to the management and DGCA,’’ he said.

On June 25, 2005 after Flight-857 on the Mumbai-Chennai-Kochi-Kuwait sector took off from Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, the reserve oxygen system got activated. Passengers immediately pulled the masks over their faces. There was no announcement but passengers began inhaling the oxygen.

When the cabin crew brought this to the notice of the pilot, instead of aborting the flight (already delayed by few hours) and bringing the plane back to Mumbai, he decided to proceed. Well-placed sources say even after the flight landed in Chennai no rectification was done of the gas cylinders. Not only was oxygen not replaced but the pilot told the aircraft maintenance engineer that there was no problem in taking the flight ahead. Thereafter, he flew all the way to Kochi without oxygen.

But clearly, sources say, the AME whose job is to clear the flight should have not taken verbal assurance of the pilot or even the cabin crew as the plane experienced depressurisation on its way from Chennai to Kochi. Oxygen masks get automatically deployed or are manually activated when there is depressurisation. The problem was attended to only at Kochi airport.

A-I has grounded pilot Captain Veepane Maker, in-flight supervisor J D Bansode and suspended aircraft maintenance engineer N S Murthy at Chennai pending a Directorate-General of Civil Aviation inquiry.

While investigations point to pilot error what is intriguing is that Bansode is taking the blame on himself. But even here, investigators say the pilot and the IFS were covering up as both did not report the snag.