In the past few days, more than 40 flights operated by the Indian carriers have received bomb threats which later turned out to be hoaxes.
Against the backdrop of a significant number of flights getting delayed and cancelled and passengers facing tough times, the regulator has come out with a set of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).
On Friday, the Alaska Airlines plane's outer section, including a window, fell off mid-air.
In the short video clip, other crew members could be seen shouting at the passenger after he hit the pilot.
The on-time performance (OTP) of Indian carriers took a major dip in January as dense fog foiled their flight schedules. According to data from the Ministry of Civil Aviation reviewed by Business Standard, five out of six major Indian carriers - IndiGo, Air India, AIX Connect, Akasa Air, and Vistara - recorded their lowest OTPs in at least the last 11 months. In response to queries, an Air India spokesperson said that during this winter, northern India experienced unusually prolonged periods of dense fog affecting traffic at the airline's two largest hubs -- Delhi and Mumbai.
The aviation regulator slapped fines amounting to Rs 2.75 crore on Indian airlines in 2023, marking a 39 per cent rise in financial penalties from Rs 1.97 crore in 2022. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said it imposed fines on domestic carriers such as Air India, IndiGo, AirAsia India and SpiceJet for issues related to non-compliance in 2023. The regulator also carried out a record number of 5,745 surveillance activities in the year to ensure compliance by airlines, aerodrome operators, and aviation personnel among others.
The CISF, tasked with providing security at airports, has also ordered a court of inquiry into the incident.
On January 31, the Indian Army intercepted a Maldivian fishing boat engaged in fishing activities within the Maldives' Special Economic Zone (EEZ), located 72 nautical miles northeast of Dhidhdhoo, Haa Alifu Atoll, the Maldives' defence ministry claimed in a statement on Friday.
An IndiGo aircraft grazed the wings of an Air India Express plane at the Kolkata airport on Wednesday, leaving the wings of both aircraft damaged, officials said.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Tuesday issued specific measures for aviation sector players to mitigate the risk of runway incursions at Indian airports. The measures include activating stop bars by Air Traffic Controllers (ATC) to inform aircraft when not to proceed, establishing contingency plans in case stop bars malfunction, establishing runway safety teams at airports, and conducting comprehensive training programs for pilots, ATC personnel, aircraft maintenance engineers, and airport drivers.
The DGCA will probe the incident and the air traffic controller concerned has been derostered, one of the officials told PTI.
Amid a spate of hoax bomb threats to multiple airlines, the IT ministry has asked social media platforms to observe due diligence obligations and promptly remove or disable access to misinformation within the strict timelines prescribed under IT rules.
Ravinder Kumar was sleeping after finishing his night shift Friday morning when a call from Indira Gandhi International Airport Police Station turned his life upside down.
Scindia claimed Tharoor is "lost in his esoteric world of thesaurus", and for him "data mining of selective press articles from the internet qualifies as "research".
Airports across the country witnessed chaotic scenes on Friday after dozens of flights were either delayed or cancelled after a widespread global computer outage that also hit operations like cash withdrawal at some banks, and impacted functioning of some brokerages. Globally, the Microsoft cloud outage led to US airlines cancelling flights, but the tech giant later reportedly said its cloud services outage in the Central US region has been resolved.
Investigators found that the aircraft, a Boeing 777-300ER, was flying at its cruise altitude of 37,000 ft south of Myanmar and near an area of developing storms in the afternoon when turbulence started to cause fluctuations between +0.44g and +1.57g for 19 seconds.
Commercial pilot licenses will now be valid for ten years, with the government amending rules as part of efforts to further improve ease of doing business in the aviation sector. Till now, the validity of Commercial Pilot License (CPL) was for five years and after completion of that period, it had to be renewed. The civil aviation ministry amended the Aircraft Rules, 1937.
'A passenger on our flight AI130, operating London-Mumbai on March 10, was found smoking in the lavatory. Subsequently he behaved in an unruly and aggressive manner, despite repeated warnings,' Air India said.
After its spiral dive last year, the Indian aviation industry noticed slight signs of improvement at the fag end of 2009 that also saw a major helicopter crash in which Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S R Reddy perished and several near-miss incidents.
Carter was in politics, but not a politician, certainly not a transactional politician, points out Shreekant Sambrani.
The pilot of Air India AI-915 Delhi-Dubai flight on February 27 allowed a woman friend to enter the cockpit, according to a complaint filed by a cabin crew member on the same flight.
A child sitting near the window was reportedly pulled by the suction, and his shirt was torn off.
'Passengers of the Jet Airways flight will be entitled for compensation for discomfort and trauma, but it may not be Rs 2 million in this incident.'
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) suspended the licences of 92 pilots in 2022 for violating safety norms, which was more than double the 2021 figure. The number of scheduled flights (domestic and international) in India increased by 32.74 per cent to 1.3 million in 2022, according to data from aviation analytics firm Cirium. A DGCA official stated that the minimum period of licence suspension in 2022 was one month and the maximum was three years.
A day after the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security filed an FIR against Continental Airlines for frisking former President A P J Abdul Kalam, the government on Wednesday said it knew about the incident and had issued a show cause notice to the airline on July 9."The BCAS, after getting the information in time, first conducted an inquiry and then issued the show cause notice on July 9. On Tuesday, they filed an FIR also Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel said.
A cabin crew member of the flight had filed a complaint with the DGCA about the pilot allowing a female friend into the cockpit.
With low-visibility conditions significantly disrupting flight operations at the Delhi airport, Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Monday said all stakeholders are working round-the-clock to minimise fog-related impact as well as passenger inconvenience, and asserted that unruly passenger behaviour is unacceptable.
Describing their situation akin to "bonded labour", two Air India pilot unions extended their support to Vistara pilots on Thursday, who have raised grievances regarding the duty roster and the revised salary structure. Amid the slew of flight cancellations and delays, Vistara chief executive officer Vinod Kannan acknowledged on Wednesday that pilot utilisation in the airline was high, and announced plans to scale back its flight schedule and overhaul the rostering system to provide pilots with more rest time.
A passenger on a New York-New Delhi American Airlines flight allegedly urinated on a fellow male passenger in a drunken state, sources said on Sunday.
"The DGCA is conducting an investigation into the matter. The Investigation team will examine the relevant facts," said a senior DGCA official.
Ashok Gajapathi Raju on Tuesday sparked a controversy by admitting that he carried matchboxes in airplanes, without them being confiscated, after he became the Union civil aviation minister.
In an advisory, DGCA said there are provisions under the civil aviation requirement for action to be taken by the airline to deal with unruly passengers.
"As Civil Aviation minister, I apologise to all those affected (by these incidents)," Ashok Gajapathi Raju told a press conference in New Delhi on Thursday evening, in an attempt to end the controversy.
The report quoted the civil defence as saying that there were no survivors in the incident.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has sought a report of the incident from the airline.
President Droupadi Murmu conferred 26 Shaurya Chakras (seven posthumous) to personnel of the armed forces, Central Armed Police Forces and state/Union Territory Police during a defence investiture ceremony.
Aviation watchdog DGCA has taken off SpiceJet from its enhanced surveillance regime, a senior official said on Tuesday. The airline, which has been facing multiple headwinds, was placed under enhanced surveillance recently. The senior DGCA official said that in view of the observations made in the past concerning inadequate maintenance and in view of the incidents during the monsoon season last year, SpiceJet was placed under enhanced surveillance.
India's scores in the ICAO's air safety oversight audit will improve substantially as the international watchdog's just-concluded validation mission was highly successful as per the initial reports, regulator DGCA said on Wednesday. ICAO is the International Civil Aviation Organisation. Under its Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme (USOAP) Continuous Monitoring Approach, an ICAO Coordinated Validation Mission (ICVM) was undertaken from November 9 to 16.
A Bengaluru-bound A320 ceo aircraft, carrying 184 people, aborted takeoff at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi due to fire in one of its engines Friday night.
The DGCA has has commenced an investigation to ascertain the cause of the incident.
