Air India broke safety rules, alleges crewmember

Air India has allegedly violated security norms. A wide-body aircraft of the airline was operated last week with eight crewmembers, one member short of what is prescribed by the safety norms of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

The incident came to light after a crewmember of an Air India aircraft wrote a letter to the management of the airline on Wednesday. According to the letter, the crewmember had flown from Mumbai to London and in the UK capital joined the London–Newark flight of the airline, which was coming from Ahmedabad. According to sources, there was no one to man an emergency gate. As per the rules, all such gates should be manned.

Things got worse for the crewmember as he was allegedly not provided medical assistance after getting injured during the Mumbai–London flight.

The letter said that the crewmembers had asked for the flight captain’s permission to rest in his horizontal bunker but the captain refused and the injured crewmember was forced to rest in a vertical chair.

According to a highly placed source from the airline, such incidents can lead to flight safety hazards, as aircraft already had a crew shortage and if the crewmember’s condition had deteriorated and he had refused to work, the flight could have got postponed or cancelled, so the airline should provide medical assistance to its crew.

Such incidents are not new and many a time airline management had been informed about thesame, the source said.