India's aviation regulatory body initiates two-month audit as homegrown airlines continue to report snags

After a string of emergency plane landings, India's civil aviation regulatory body Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has initiated a two-month-long audit to find the reasons for the unusual malfunction problems persisting in Indian planes.

The two-month audit was initiated after DGCA, whilst conducting spot checks found that unqualified and inadequate engineering personnel were greenlighting the flying of planes.

WATCH: What's wrong with India's aviation sector?

The audit seeks to check the equipment used by the airline engineering personnel, their quality assurance system, the roster of aircraft in the air and grounded due to lack of spare parts, the hangars, stores and the maintenance control centre.

However, emphasis will be given to gauging the quality of manpower available as there have been reports of increased engineering negligence.

Reportedly, IndiGo's maintenance crew had gone the whistleblower route recently and exposed the low-cost carrier for a lackadaisical attitude towards the safety of the aircraft.

"The operators to whom you have leased your aircraft are not following standard procedure of maintenance. For the past four days technical staff are on strike and still they are flying the aircraft without proper maintenance and even they are deferring the scheduled maintenance" a letter to Airbus from the maintenance crew read.

The notable 'malfunction' incidents

As reported extensively by WION, last week, for the second time in a month, an Indian plane had to land in the neighbouring country of Pakistan after developing technical snags. The IndiGo's Sharjah-Hyderbad flight 6E-1406 was forced to land in Karachi. Later, another plane was dispatched from India to ferry the passengers back to their destination.

The first plane to land in Karachi was a Dubai-bound Delhi Spicejet flight that landed in Karachi on July 6. Reportedly, the plane had developed a fuel issue. However, it was only after the emergency landing that it was revealed that the issue was caused due to a malfunctioning fuel indicator light in the cockpit.

Similarly, on the night of July 16, an Air India Express flight bound for Dubai was diverted to Muscat after a burning smell was observed in the cabin mid-air.

However, the scariest incident of the lot was when Spicejet's Kandla-Mumbai flight made an emergency landing in Mumbai after the outer pane of the windshield cracked at the height of 23,000 feet. In total, SpiceJet has been reported for eight incidents of technical malfunction since last month.

(With inputs from agencies)

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