Vistara Pilot Lands Plane Without Training, Airline Gets A Fine
First officers are trained to land aircraft in simulators before being allowed to do it with an actual aircraft that has passengers on board.
India’s aviation regulator has fined Air Vistara ₹ 10 lakh for violating safety regulations.
The airline has been fined by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for letting an improperly trained pilot land a flight at Madhya Pradesh’s Indore airport with passengers on board.
The pilot, who was the first officer on the flight, landed the aircraft at the Indore airport recently without first getting the requisite training in a simulator, they said. “This was a serious violation endangering lives of the passengers on board,” an official said.
First officers are trained to land aircraft in simulators before being allowed to do it with an actual aircraft that has passengers on board. A captain is also similarly trained in a simulator before they can give landing instructions to the first officer.
The Vistara aircraft in question was landed by the first officer without him or the captain being trained at the simulator, which is a serious violation endangering the lives of the passengers on board. The lapse was detected during a landing in Indore.
It is not immediately clear where the aircraft took off from and when exactly this happened.