After flight snag, PM Modi rings up Rahul Gandhi

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to the Congress president  Rahul Gandhi to enquire about his safety after an aircraft carrying the Congress president developed a snag before landing at Hubballi airport in poll-bound Karnataka. Sources say “It was a private conversation between the two (over phone).”

“All the authorities concerned were informed about the plane developing snag. After that, the Prime Minister rang up Mr. Gandhi enquiring if he was fine,” the informed sources added.

The Congress president is on a two-day visit to the state of Karnataka to canvass for his party for the May 12 assembly polls.

The Congress has demanded a thorough probe into the incident involving a technical snag in the aircraft carrying party chief Rahul Gandhi from the national capital to poll-bound Karnataka.

Alleging “intentional tampering” with aircraft, the Congress party had on Thursday demanded a probe into the “suspicious and faulty performance” of the 10-seater Falcon 2000. The plane had developed a technical snag mid-air, making it tilt heavily to one side and steep loss in altitude.

Aide of the Congress president, Kaushal Vidyarthee wrote in a letter to state director general of police Neelmani.N. Raju.

Later Mr. Vidyarthee also tweeted about the whole incident terming it as the ‘most frightful experience’ of his life.

Congress's communications in-charge Mr. Randeep Surjewala described the incident —the failure of the auto-pilot mode in the aircraft — as “horrific” and “serious” and demanded a probe to find out if there was any "foul play".

A DGCA official was earlier quoted by news agencies as saying, “The operator has reported the incident to us. According to the report, it was a snag in the auto-pilot mode.”

“The pilot shifted to the manual (mode) and (the aircraft) landed safely. Shutdown of the auto-pilot (mode) is not uncommon. For a VIP flight, the DGCA examines it thoroughly. We shall do that in this case as well,” he added.

Meanwhile the DGCA has setup a two member committee to probe the incident. “The DGCA has set up a two member panel to investigate the incident,”a senior DGCA official said.

“While one member is from the Directorate of Air Safety, the other member is from the Directorate of Airworthiness,” the official added. The panel has been asked to submit its report in the next two-three weeks, the official added. As part of the probe, the official said the panel would call cockpit crew and also engineers for questioning about the incident.