Pilots blamed for near-crash of Rahul Gandhi's chartered plane in Karnataka

New Delhi: “Slight delay” on the part of the pilot-in-command during the process of taking over the controls manually after tripping of the autopilot was responsible for the Falcon-2000 aircraft carrying Congress president Rahul Gandhi from Delhi to Hubli in Karnataka on April 26 this year to “excessively bank” (tilt) to about 65 degrees and lose 735 ft altitude within just 24 seconds, the findings of a DGCA probe has revealed.

The report also said “the incident was survivable”. There were a total of nine people on board the aircraft on that day. Ironically, the report of the aviation regulator was made public on Friday, the day Mr. Gandhi left Delhi to undertake the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra in Tibet (China) reportedly in accordance with a wish he had expressed in April when the plane plunged hundreds of feet downwards in  a matter of seconds during the campaign for the Karnataka polls.

The DGCA’s final probe report — submitted by its deputy director (Air Safety) A.X. Joseph and its deputy director (Airworthiness) N.C. Ghosh — said that a flight control computer “was suspected for a transient fault” and that the report of the vendor showed that “the failure was due to intermittent configuration module A4” which was replaced after the incident.

The aircraft had landed safely at Hubli with the pilots operating it manually. There were no injuries to those on board who included five passengers, the two pilots, one cabin crew and one engineer. There was also no damage to the aircraft that was operated by the company Ligare Aviation Ltd. The Falcon 2000 a civil aircraft is manufactured by M/s Dassualt Aviation.

The DGCA probe report said, “It was observed that the aircraft was cruising at FL 410 (41,000 feet) when autopilot tripped. The crew (pilots) did not realise that the aircraft has gone into a bank with yaw damper failure. The crew only realised when the bank angle warning came at 45 degree i.e after 13 seconds of autopilot disengagement. The bank angle kept on increasing with altitude loss and reached a maximum of 64.95 (almost 65) degrees i.e 15 seconds after the autopilot disengagement and altitude loss of 735 ft from the assigned flight level. The crew initiated corrective action to control the aircraft altitude 15 seconds after the autopilot disengagement. The aircraft was finally recovered to straight and level flight after 24 seconds from the autopilot disengagement. From the above it is inferred that the crew actions were slightly delayed to take the corrective actions.”

The report added, “The PIC actions were slightly delayed as he took over control manually only after the warning was activated. This delayed actions caused the aircraft to reach high bank angle value and altitude loss which created panic and scare for the passengers in the cabin.”

It added, “Both the pilots got busy in isolating the autopilot failure and did not realise that the aircraft has gone into right bank. After 15 seconds of autopilot being disengaged, the bank angle warning got activated that was the time when crew realised that the aircraft has gone into a bank.”