NEW DELHI, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- The Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP) has demanded that the federal government ground the private airline Air India's entire Boeing 787 fleet for electrical checks, following recurring electrical glitches and maintenance concerns in the said aircraft.
The Federation wrote a letter to India's Civil Aviation Minister K. Rammohan Naidu, expressing concerns in the aftermath of two major incidents within a span of one week involving Air India's AI-117 and AI-154 aircraft.
Earlier this month, an un-commanded deployment of Ram Air Turbine (RAT) on Air India flight AI-117 was reported at Birmingham. Following the incident, India's civil aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), asked the private airline Air India to reinspect the RAT on planes with replaced power conditioning modules.
Simultaneously, the DGCA also sought a "comprehensive report" from the U.S. aircraft maker Boeing on the preventive measures to be implemented with respect to the un-commanded RAT deployment incident, said media reports.
Speaking to Xinhua over the phone, FIP president R.S. Randhawa said that repeated technical problems, particularly electrical glitches, besides other safety concerns, were reported in the said aircraft fleet. He confirmed the FIP's demand for grounding Air India's Boeing 787 fleet for electrical checks.
Referring to the June 12 air crash involving AI-171 aircraft, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, in India's western state of Gujarat, the FIP chief said that the way the Aircraft Investigation Bureau was conducting the inquiry was "dissatisfactory."
Demanding a judicial probe into the air crash killing over 260 people, Randhawa said that comprehensive electrical checks on the entire fleet of Boeing 787 were required urgently in order to ensure air travel safety. ■しかく