Air India Express was in March Questioned for Flouting Aviation Safety Directives
Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, July 4: Months before the tragic Air India London-bound flight crash in Ahmedabad on June 12, one of the worst aviation disasters in the world in a decade, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), India’s civil aviation watchdog, had reprimanded Air India Express, the Air India’s budget carrier, for not timely changing engine parts of an Airbus A320.
The direction for changing the engine parts was issued by the European Union’s aviation safety agency. The airlines was reprimanded not only for not complying with the direction but also for falsifying records to show compliance, a government memo showed.
In a statement on Friday, the Air India Express, a subsidiary of Air India owned by the Tata Group, said it acknowledged the error to the Indian watchdog and undertook “remedial action and preventive measures.” Air India has been under intense scrutiny since the June Boeing Dreamliner crash in Ahmedabad which killed all but one of the 242 people on-board and 33 people on the ground, the world’s worst aviation disaster in a decade. The causes for the disaster were still being investigated.
The engine issue in the Air India Express’ Airbus was raised on March 18, months before the crash. But the regulator has this year also warned parent Air India for breaching rules for flying three Airbus planes with overdue checks on escape slides, and in June warned it about “serious violations” of pilot duty timings.
Air India Express has more than 115 aircrafts and flies to more than 50 destinations, with 500 daily flights. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency in 2023 issued an airworthiness directive to address a “potential unsafe condition” on CFM International LEAP-1A engines, asking for replacement of some components such as engine seals and rotating parts, saying some manufacturing deficiencies had been found. The agency’s directive said “this condition, if not corrected, could lead to failure of affected parts, possibly resulting in high energy debris release, with consequent damage to, and reduced control of, the aeroplane.”
The Indian government’s confidential memo in March sent to the airline said surveillance by the DGCA revealed the parts modification “was not complied” on an engine of an Airbus A320 “within the prescribed time limit.”
“In order to show that the work has been carried out within the prescribed limits, the AMOS records have apparently been altered/forged,” the memo added, referring to the Aircraft Maintenance and Engineering Operating System software used by airlines to manage maintenance and airworthiness.
The “mandatory” modification was required on Air India Express’ VT-ATD plane, the memo added. That plane typically flies on domestic routes and some international destinations such as Dubai and Muscat, according to the AirNav Radar website. The lapse “indicates that accountable manager has failed to ensure quality control,” it added.
Air India Express said its technical team missed the scheduled implementation date for parts replacement due to the migration of records on its monitoring software, and fixed the problem soon after it was identified.
It did not give dates of compliance or directly address DGCA’s comment about records being altered, but said after the March memo it took “necessary administrative actions”, which included removing the quality manager from their position and suspending the deputy continuing airworthiness manager. The lapse was first flagged during a DGCA audit in October 2024 and the plane in question took only a few trips after it was supposed to replace the CFM engine parts, sources said.
The Indian government told parliament in February that authorities warned or fined airlines in 23 instances for safety violations last year. Three of those cases involved Air India Express, and eight Air India.
Meanwhile, Air India on Friday denied allegations of coercing families of victims of the June 12 Ahmedabad – London flight accident into signing documents about their financial dependency on the deceased to reduce compensation payouts. In a detailed statement, the airline called the claims “unsubstantiated and inaccurate.”
The controversy surfaced following reports that some of the bereaved families were being compelled to disclose financial ties to their deceased loved ones — allegedly as a prerequisite for receiving compensation. However, the airlines clarified that the request for such information was a part of a standard process to ensure that interim compensation reached the rightful beneficiaries promptly.
In an official statement, the airlines stated, “It has come to our notice that allegations have been made against the company claiming that families of the deceased in the AI-171 accident are being forced to sign papers disclosing their financial dependency on the deceased, in an attempt to slash compensation payments.”
“Efforts are being made by the airlines to process the payment of the interim compensation (also referred to as advance compensation) as soon as possible, to meet the immediate financial needs of affected family members, with the first payments having been made within days of the accident. However, Air India cannot process these payments in an information vacuum,” it added.
“To facilitate payments, the airlines have sought basic information to establish family relationships to ensure that the advance payments are received by those entitled to them. Whilst the questionnaire does ask family members to indicate with a “yes” or “no” as to whether they are “financially dependent” on the deceased, the airline believes that the process is entirely fair and necessary in order to process the payments to those most in need of assistance. Starting June 15, a Facilitation Centre was established by the airline at the Taj Skyline hotel in Ahmedabad, where the questionnaire relating to interim compensation was made available,” it said.
