Mid Day probe reveals four stowaways Almost made it to Mangalore; the woman and three children were mentioned as infants in aiR INDIA passenger list
Mid Day probe reveals four stowaways Almost made it to Mangalore; the woman and three children were mentioned as infants in aiR INDIA passenger list
Cockpit chaos
The woman was the wife of a pilot. The two other stowaways were her kids and the third was a school girl. The woman was asked to sit on the instructor's seat in the cockpit, while the children sat on the lap of three pursers
On May 5, minutes before the overbooked Mumbai-Mangalore AI flight 640 readied for takeoff, four stowaways were quietly smuggled in.
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Restrictions: According to aviation experts, only valid passengers and authorised personnel are allowed into the cabin. |
Three were children and one was the wife of the pilot's colleague.
She was asked to sit on the instructor's seat in the cockpit, while the children sat on the laps of three pursers.
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The passenger list stated that they were all infants.
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Door damagedMiD DAY investigations have revealed that the stowaways would have reached Mangalore gratis, had it not been for an inopportune incident.
The plane door got damaged when the pilot erroneously gave orders to the ground staff to begin procedures for take off. Unfortunately, the aerobridge had not been moved and the door, which was still open, was damaged.
The 172 passengers and two infants (excluding the four stowaways) deplaned and were moved to another flight.
As the woman and three children were stowaways they could not board the relief flight. In the course of the investigation into the broken door the stowaway incident tumbled out.
ScapegoatHowever, members of the Indian Commercial Pilots Association said the pilots were being made scapegoats.
"The woman was the wife of a fellow pilot and was issued a manual boarding pass along with her children and another school girl.
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Why should the pilots be blamed? The orders must have come from higher-ups," said a senior commander.
Senior pilots alleged that stowaways were common and were almost always at the insistence of seniors. Yet every single senior person said they had no idea of the stowaways.
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Dr Naseem Zaidi, the director general, Directorate General of Civil Aviation said a report was expected this week, "But I have no idea of a woman's presence in the cockpit."
Air India's executive director (corporate commun- ications) Jitendra Bhargava, responding to an e-mailed query, said, "The director of air safety (who conducted a parallel inquiry for the airline) is in Frankfurt. I don't know the status of the probe or about the presence of the woman in the cockpit."
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Pilot's discretionu00a0
Aviation experts said the sequence of events raised serious questions on the safety and security standards
followed at Mumbai airport.
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"Only valid passengers and authorised personnel are allowed into the cabin and no one else," an expert argued.
However, Indian Commer-cial Pilots' Associationu00a0 general secretary Captain R S Otaal said, "The pilot is authorised to take a call on whom to admit into the cockpit.
This is allowed till the time the aircraft is on ground and kids accompanied by their mothers are often allowed a viewing."
