DGCA forms two member panel to probe Gandhi’s flight snag

Team Udayavani, Apr 28, 2018, 9:17 AM IST

New Delhi/Bengaluru: The nation’s civil aviation regulator said that it has set up a two-member panel to explore into the reason for a snag in the air craft which carried Congress President Rahul Gandhi to Hubballi in Karnataka on Thursday. 

As per a senior authority with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) a “Hawk 2000 air ship VT-AVH was engaged with an episode while working flight” from New Delhi to Hubballi. 

A senior DGCA official in New Delhi said “Administrator has detailed the occurrence to DGCA. According to administrator report, it was obstacle of autopilot mode and pilot moved to manual mode and airplane landed securely. Autopilot incidents episodes are normal,”

“For any VIP flight DGCA researches altogether. DGCA has set up a two member committee”

In any case, Hubballi Airport Director Ahilya S. Kakodikar said that no complaint has been gotten from the pilot of a flying machine which purportedly built up an obstacle when Gandhi was flying in it on Thursday. 

“Neither the pilot nor the aviation authority (ATC) complained to me about the snag,” Hubballi airplane terminal Director Ahilya S. Kakodikar told correspondents. 

The chief of the airplane terminal, which is overseen by the state-run Airports Authority of India (AAI), likewise focused on that the flying machine had landed securely. 

“It was a safe landing. If there should arise an occurrence of any variations from the norm, the ATC would have recorded it,” she said. 

The Congress on Thursday complained to the Karnataka Police that the Falcon 2000 air craft in which Gandhi and four others traveled to Hubballi, around 400km northwest of state capital Bengaluru, from Delhi had endured a mid-air snag. 

The complaint, routed to the state’s Director General of Police Neelamani N. Raju, asked for the state police chief to “ground” the air craft at Hubballi and examine the snag. 

In view of the complaint by Congress official Shakir Sanadi, the police in Hubballi held up a First Information Report late on Thursday.