Pilot and co-pilot of Indigo flight 6E 237 have been suspended. The reason, the duo almost landed the plane on a parallel road to the runway they were supposed to land the plane.
The flight which took off from Ahmedabad, was headed to Jaipur. As per schedule, the aircraft arrived near Jaipur airport, and was getting ready for landing on time. Just when the aircraft was about to land, when it was 900 feet above the ground, sirens in the cockpit went off.
Surprised / shocked, the pilot and co-pilot soon realized the reason for the loud sirens. They were about to land on the parallel service road next to the actual runway! Before the plane descended any further, the pilots managed to take the plane back to a respectable altitude and perform the landing run once again. This time on the runway and not the parallel road.
If the pilots would have made it any later in realizing their error, it could have turned into a major disaster. Both, pilot and the co-pilot were grounded by Indigo. DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation, Government of India) is probing this serious lapse.
Indigo later issued a statement which read – “IndiGo Flight 6E 237 enroute Ahmedabad to Jaipur being operated with A320 aircraft VT-IGK was involved in EGPWS ‘too low terrain’ warning on February 27, 2016, when the aircraft was on finals during visual approach at runway 27 at Jaipur. The captain-in-command immediately took a precautionary measure and carried a go-around. The aircraft landed safely on subsequent ILS approach on runway 27.”
“At IndiGo, the safety and security of customers, crew and the aircraft is top priority. At no time the safety was compromised. Both the pilots have been taken off from flight duty with immediate effect by IndiGo chief of flight safety pending investigation. The matter was duly reported to the DGCA by IndiGo flight safety department.”
Wow!! Indigo Pilot got confused between Runway and Road in Jaipur. Rather than hyping it as failure; this should be Advt for Nitin Gadkari !
— Yashwant Deshmukh (@YRDeshmukh) May 24, 2016
