Prosecute DGCA officials: Petition

A union leader and former Air India cabin crew has petitioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi and demanded prosecution of officials of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for allegedly compromising the safety of passengers.

General Secretary of the All India Cabin Crew Association K.V.J. Rao has put up the petition online for signature on Monday. According to his petition, Air India conducted illegal risk assessment analysis on all its commercial flights to Australia by undertaking two landings while keeping passengers in the dark. The petition says that a Right to Information query has revealed no prior permission was taken by DGCA for this exercise which means it is a criminal act.

Mr Rao has demanded that cases be filed against these officials under Section 120 (concealing design to commit offence punishable with imprisonment), 332 (voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty) and 34B (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention).

According to Mr Rao, “While the RTI query denied any dispensation for two landings or any permission for risk assessment analysis on the Australian sector by DGCA, the same have been taking place in Air India under DGCA’s very nose. In fact, the lives of around 100,000 passengers and crew have been endangered due to violations till date and no data about these violations has been shown in any of the DGCA audits.”

DGCA sources said Mr Rao had written a few letters to the regulator about violation of security norms. “If you could inform us how the DGCA and its officers have permitted a live test to be conducted on commercial flights with genuine, untrained, unsuspecting, unaware and uninformed passengers. We would also like to know, under which rule, regulation or law was this live testing of reduced flight safety norms on scheduled flight with unsuspecting passengers on board permitted,” read one of Mr Rao’s letters which remains unanswered.