MUMBAI: Airline flights into Imphal airport are currently under scrutiny by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). The question being probed is: during descent to land in Imphal, do certain pilots breach the limits set for a safe descent rate to wilfully carry out an “unstabilized” or unsafe approach and landing in order to save fuel.
Early this week, Capt Amit Singh, an air safety expert sent a mail to the DGCA alerting the regulator to a particular pattern that he had observed in Imphal landings, carried out between January and June 2020. “A total of 28% of flights fell in the high-risk category with high vertical speed (rate of descent) more than the safe limit of 1000 feet/min, when the aircraft were less than 1000 feet above ground level,” his letter said.
Responding to his letter, director general of civil aviation, Arun Kumar said: “We are conducting a detailed fact finding inquiry into the contents of the complaints with regard to these and its safety implications. Based on the outcome, further action shall be initiated.”
These findings have a catch though. Capt Singh said he sourced data from flightradar24, an app that tracks flights real-time. “The data may be prone to errors and inaccuracies as compared to the aircraft flight recorder data therefore I would request DGCA to analyse the airline’s flight recorder data,” he said adding that, to eliminate large scale inaccuracies he had used a single source and followed multiple airline flight operations.
