Pilots Demand Grounding of Boeing 787s After Incidents

Mumbai, Oct 10 (PTI) In the wake of two incidents involving Air India's Boeing Dreamliner planes in one week, the Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP) on Friday urged the civil aviation ministry to ground the airline's entire fleet of Dreamliners, check their electrical systems and also order a DGCA special audit of Air India.

FIP said on October 9, Air India flight AI154 from Vienna to Delhi diverted to Dubai due to major technical issues and on October 4, Ram Air Turbine (RAT) was deployed on AI117 while landing at the Birmingham airport from Amritsar. Both flights were operated with Boeing 787 planes, also known as Dreamliners.

On June 12, Air India's Dreamliner operating the flight AI171 to London Gatwick crashed soon after take off from Ahmedabad, killing 260 people.

In a letter to Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu, FIP President Captain C S Randhawa said that since June 16, the grouping has been demanding that all Boeing 787s in the country must be checked thoroughly for the electrical systems.

While seeking a thorough investigation into the two incidents involving AI117 and AI154, the grouping demanded that all Dreamliners in the country should be grounded, and their electrical systems and other repetitive snags be thoroughly checked.

"There is a need to check the MEL (Minimum Equipment List) releases and repetitive snags on the aircraft especially B-787s," FIP said as it sought a special audit of Air India by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

Air India has 33 Dreamliners in its fleet, and IndiGo operates these planes leased from Norse Atlantic.

According to the letter, while operating the flight AI154, the plane had major technical issues where the autopilot system suddenly failed, triggering a series of technical malfunctions.

"The aircraft experienced failures across critical systems which included Autopilots, ILS (Instrument Landing System), Flight Directors (FDs) and Flight Control System Degradation with no Autoland capability. The pilots could not engage the autopilots due electrical malfunctions; thus, pilots were constrained to fly manually at night and divert to Dubai.

"Moreover, the FDs were not available with degraded flight control systems," FIP, which represents around 5,000 pilots, said in the letter.

FIP also said the aircraft landed safely at Dubai and complimented the skill of the pilots for flying the plane with limited automation/systems.