The government on Thursday said that the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) had issued four show-cause notices to Air India over 29 violations. These violations are addressed as per the Enforcement Policy and Procedure Manual of DGCA.

A few instances of systematic issues were observed post-merger of Vistara and Air India, said Minister of State for Civil Aviation Murlidhar Mohol in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha.

“Systemic issues were due to the adoption of new software and systems. A compliance reply has been received from Air India,” the minister informed. The DGCA carried out 171 regulatory audits from 2020 to June 2025 to ensure safety in India’s civil aviation sector.

In an earlier reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, MoS Mohol informed that a total of two incidents of turbulence and 10 incidents of emergency landing due to technical snags have been reported since January 2024 apart from which Air India’s Boeing aircraft VT-ANB on June 12, 2025, “declared MAYDAY and eventually met with an accident”.

The minister said that pilot training in India is governed by extant regulations as specified under various Civil Aviation Requirements (CAR) and operations circulars, which are in line with the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and global best practices.

The DGCA also ordered a new set of Comprehensive Special Audits to enhance safety following the jolt to the country’s civil aviation sector in the wake of the tragic Air India crash in Ahmedabad.

The audit framework covers the entire range of aviation entities, including scheduled and non-scheduled airlines, maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) organisations, flying training schools, air navigation service providers, airport operators, and ground handling agencies.

The aviation regulator has made it clear that failure to comply with audit recommendations could attract penalties such as suspension of operations or even cancellation of licences in cases of violation of safety norms.

-IANS

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Two pilots and an aircraft engineer died after a helicopter of Heritage Aviation, New Delhi, flying over the Bavdhan area in Pune crashed in the hilly terrain, officials said on Wednesday. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has ordered a probe into the tragedy that left Capt Paramjit Singh and Capt G K Pillai, besides an aircraft maintenance engineer, Pritamchand Bharadwaj, dead this morning in the chopper crash.

According to officials, the chopper, an Agusta 109-VT-EW, had taken off from the Oxford Golf Club in Pune for a flight to Juhu Airport in Mumbai at around 7:15 am without passengers on board. En route, barely 20 km away and some four to five minutes after the take-off, the chopper suddenly crashed at around 7:20 am near the HEMRL-DRDO factory, said a police officer speaking from the site of the tragedy near Bavdhan. Videos of the incident shot by some locals showed the helicopter seemingly losing control and plunging almost abruptly, headlong into a forested hilly region before going up in smoke. Despite repeated attempts by IANS, officials of Heritage Aviation remained tight-lipped about the tragedy and stonewalled all questions on the victims and the possible causes of the tragedy.

Bharatiya Janata Party Minister Chandrakant Patil said that as per preliminary information, the Pune crash may have occurred owing to some technical snag and suspected poor visibility, which will be probed. As per certain local reports, ruling Nationalist Congress Party state president Sunil Tatkare, was scheduled to fly by the same ill-fated chopper. The helicopter was flying to Mumbai to pick up Tatkare for a flight later today after it had completed certain other flights in Beed on Tuesday. An official said that the police control was informed of the tragedy by a caller. Immediately, a team was set up including the local fire brigade, which rushed to the crash spot with the help of villagers, in a difficult hilly terrain of the western ghats.

The police also informed the local aviation authorities and a team of experts from Heritage Aviation was dispatched from New Delhi and Mumbai for a probe into the tragedy. The Hinjewadi Police Station together with aviation officials are coordinating to assess the situation and other details and the bodies of the victims were shifted for autopsy at a Pune hospital. This is the second incident of its kind in the Pune hills after a private helicopter on a Mumbai-Hyderabad flight had crashed in the region on August 24, injuring four, and prior to that, on May 3, a helicopter flying to pick up Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sushma Andhare had crashed near a helipad in Raigad.

–IANS

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