New guidelines for pilots, landings and bathroom breaks

Mangalore Today News Network

June 02:  After the Mangalore crash last month in which nearly 160 people were killed on an Air India plane from Dubai, the government has issued a new set of guidelines for all airlines. 

A circular from the Civil Aviation Ministry lists the correct landing procedures, as well as the protocol to be followed by pilots and crew in the cockpit.

In the Mangalore crash, India’s worst aviation disaster in more than a decade, the pilot overshot the hilltop runway by 2000 feet and the plane crashed into the valley and burst into flames. 

The notices stresses that "a large percentage of incidents and accidents occur during the approach and landing or take-off phase of flight. This is also the phase where there is transition from automated flight to manual flight, instrument to visual reference, and vice versa. It is critical that Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are followed meticulously in these phases of flight...a good landing is not one that the passengers perceive as a soft landing, but one that is made at the correct point on the runway with the correct flight parameters."

This point is significant since Air India is thought to have issued a circular to its pilots well before the Mangalore tragedy, asking for soft landings to conserve fuel and protect the air frame of the aircraft. The danger of a soft landing is that an aircraft potentially uses up more of the runway to come to a complete halt.

A few days after the Mangalore crash, another Air India flight was reported to have flirted dangerously with disaster.  A plane from Dubai to Pune plunged several thousand feet.  A government inquiry is trying to determine why.  A report in the newspaper The Indian Express states that the pilot went to the bathroom and got locked out of the cockpit.  The pilot did not follow rules that mandate a flight attendant must be moved into the cockpit when the pilot takes a break.  In his absence, the paper states, the co-pilot was unable to handle the plane. 

In an apparent reference to that incident, the new guidelines state that "In case one of the crew members has to leave the cockpit during the non critical phases of flight, the cabin crew is required to be inside the cockpit and occupy the observer seat...the pilot remaining in the cockpit shall wear shoulders harness, and headset and maintain high level of alertness, and situational awareness. He should have an unobstructed access to the flight controls."

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