THE Bombay High Court on Wednesday directed Air-India (A-I) to file an affidavit before April 5, in response to a public interest litigation filed by Member of Parliament Sanjay Raut, challenging the air safety standards followed by the airline.
Raut, who is also a member of the Civil Aviation Consultative Committee and Editor of Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna, has raised concerns about air crew training standards and duty times of pilots.
Raut says A-I continues to violate safety norms and put passenger lives at risk even after he raised the issue with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
The petition asks for strict action against A-I officials including Chairman and Managing Director V Thulasidas and Director (Operations) M K Hathi.
Raut quotes a DGCA document called the Civil Aviation Requirements (CAR) and says A-I is violating CAR rules on approval of instructors, examiners and check pilots.
CAR rules specify a minimum of 1,000 hours of command experience to qualify as instructors. The CAR allows the stipulation to be relaxed to 500 hours if the pilot has instructional experience of 200 hours.
The petition says that, in December 2004, Hathi wrote to the DGCA asking for a relaxation of the 500+200 rule for A-I. When the DGCA did not reply, a similar letter was resent in June 2005.
In October 2004, senior instructors had written to A-I complaining about the CAR violation and had pointed out serious compromises in procedure. The DGCA rejected A-I’s rule relaxation request.
‘‘Apart from this, there is also the issue of the number of flying hours for pilots,’’ said Raut’s lawyer K P Anil Kumar. ‘‘These issues have also been raised in Parliament.’’