2 pilots’ licences suspended: False pvt jet fuel shortage & SpiceJet Durgapur turbulence

NEW DELHI: “Falsely” declaring running low on fuel to avoid a long hovering period and get priority landing for a charter company’s business jet has cost a pilot dear. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has suspended the pilot’s licence for a month following a probe that showed that the luxury jet had enough fuel on landing.
Additionally, the regulator has suspended for six months licence of the pilot-in-command (PIC) of the SpiceJet flight that encountered sever turbulence while approaching its destination, Durgapur, on May 1, 2022. Seventeen people, 14 passengers and three cabin crew members, were injured in that.
“The co-pilot had asked the captain to avoid flying the Boeing 737 through the clouds ahead and to skirt them. The PIC felt they could make it through a green patch amid the clouds and decided to go through them. The aircraft encountered severe turbulence. The captain’s licence has been suspended for six months,” said a senior DGCA official.
About the false fuel emergency case, sources say the pilot was operating a Premier 1A aircraft for a Mumbai-based charter company from Bokaro to Ranchi on October 19, 2021, with four passengers on board. “The aircraft took off from Bokaro with the fuel required for this flight. The holding time (waiting period to land) was very high at Ranchi. Enroute, the pilot requested Ranchi air traffic control (ATC) for priority landing, citing shortage of fuel,” say sources.
After getting this request from the pilot, Ranchi ATC asked scheduled aircraft on hold to give priority landing to the business jet. “Neither the operating crew (pilot), nor the operator (charter company) reported the low fuel occurrence to the DGCA. The same was intimidated to the regulator by the ATC,” say sources.
After getting the report, the regulator launched a probe which found that the aircraft had enough fuel after landing and also that its fuel gauge was not malfunctioning. “The cause of the incident was providing false information by cockpit crew to Ranchi ATC to avoid excessive hold time by creating a minimum fuel situation,” say sources.
The Durgapur-bound SpiceJet flight that faced turbulence had taken off as SG-945 on May 1, 2022, from Mumbai with 199 people on board — 195 passengers, four cabin crew and two pilots. “During descent, the aircraft experienced severe turbulence. In this period the autopilot got disengaged for two minutes and the crew manually flew the aircraft,” the DGCA had said in a statement. It now emerges the “the co-pilot had asked the captain to skirt the clouds ahead and not fly through them,” say DGCA officials.