NEW DELHI: Aviation regulator DGCA has grounded an AirAsia (India) pilot for three months for mistakenly sending the hijack code to Air Traffic Services (ATS) instead of an emergency message during a Delhi-Srinagar flight on June 9 which suffered an engine snag.
The pilot-in-command (PIC) of that flight, who had asked for the emergency code to be squawked (technical for sending a message), has been cleared to resume flying again with immediate effect.
The false scare following a real snag had happened at 6.03 am on June 9 when AirAsia India Airbus A320 was winging its way to Srinagar on flight I5-715 with 173 passengers and two infants onboard. After flying for about 50 minutes, the A320 reportedly saw its left engine stall. The flight deck got a warning for one of the engines stalling and then the plane (VT-PNQ) began losing altitude.
