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Overloaded Flight: Air India
flies in cockpit too
WSN Network
NEW DELHI: It
happens only in India. Air India carried three more passengers than
the number of seats on a Mumbai-Mangalore overloaded flight, and
made one of them sit in the cockpit while other two sat in temporary
seats meant for the crew. The extra-ordinary facts came to light
only because the flight came under a scanner because of an unrelated
mishap: a door of the plane had fallen apart when it started moving
while attached to an aerobridge.
A probe by the
Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has found that the
flight, IC 179, being operated on a 172-seater Airbus A-321, had
three passengers more than its seating capacity on May 5 this year.
The cockpits in
modern aircraft have three seats. While two are for the pilot and
co-pilot, the third is called a jump seat which is usually vacant.
Since the
process of issuing boarding passes is completely computerized, the
system stops generating passes once a flight is full. In this case,
however, the probe has found that boarding passes were allegedly
issued manually to enable the extra passengers to clear the
different levels of pre-embarkation security checks.
15
July 2009
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