Jet Airways captain grounded

MUMBAI, JUNE 30: The Directorate General of Civil Aviation DGCA today grounded senior commander Capt V K Kurve of the Jet Airways and suspended the licence of an aircraft maintenance engineer following an inquiry into the near-mishap involving a Calicut-bound Boeing 737-400 flight at Mumbai airport on June 25.

According to sources, the aircraft was flown in to Mumbai from Mangalore by Capt Kurve, but he and the AME C S Sahni did not take notice of the technical snag experienced by the aircraft. When the same plane later was used for the Mumbai-Calicut flight, the commander Capt N T Malkani, was forced to abort take-off when he experienced the same technical snag and swerved violently to the left on the take-off run. Capt Malkani managed to stop the aircraft carrying 135 passengers, including an infant and six crew members at the edge of the runway.

This was the second time that Capt Kurve has been grounded by the DGCA. On the inaugural flight of Jet Airways in May 1993, Capt Kurve had made a wronglanding at Coimbatore when he landed at the Indian Air Force base instead of the civilian airport there.

The June 25 incident has cast serious doubts on the maintenance of aircraft by Jet Airways. Barely a month earlier, an Indore-bound flight carrying 81 passengers flight had skidded off the runway on May 29 and got stuck in the mud as one of the two engines had failed to pick up power. The commander of the flight, Capt K Rodrigues, was taken off the flying roster by the DGCA, pending an inquiry into the incident.