Mumbai: Ghatkopar police have registered a First Information Report (FIR) against UY Aviation in the backdrop of the plane crash incident which claimed five lives, including one pedestrian, on June 28 last year. Pilot Maria Zuberi’s husband, Prabhat Kathuria, is the complainant in the FIR and has named senior officials of the UY aviation and other people responsible for the crash.
The plane crash had killed pilot Capt Pradeep Rajput, co-pilot Capt Maria Zuberi of UY Aviation, assistant maintenance manager Surabhi Gupta and technician Manish Pandey from Indamer Aviation and a pedestrian. According to the complainant, the aircraft, which had taken off for a test flight from the Juhu Aerodrome, did not have an airworthiness certificate.
The FIR has named UY Aviation officials Deepak Koneri, Anil Chauhan, Vinod Sai among others, spare part provider Ajay Agarwal, Indamer Aviation officials Sanjeev Gupta, Avinash Bharti and others. Police are yet to take any action or make any arrests in the case.
A standing committee, comprising of 20 Lok Sabha members and 10 Rajya Sabha members, with BJP MP Kirit Somaiya as the chairperson, examined the safety and social security measures for the employees of scheduled/non-scheduled test-flying air operators/Maintenance Repair Overhaul (MRO) companies.
Presenting the report in the Parliament, Somaiya said the facts about the Ghatkopar air crash that emerged during the hearing before the Committee were shocking. “DGCA has stated that the airline company (UY Aviation) and Indamer Aviation (an MRO company) went ahead with the test flight in bad weather (which prohibits any type of test flights) and that too without legal sanction from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
Complainant Prabhat Kathuria said in the complaint that his wife had mentioned to him that the weather conditions were not conducive for a test flight for a small plane like Beechcraft King Air C90 aircraft. He said norms of the DGCA do not permit test flights of small planes in rainy weather, and asked who authorised the aircraft to take off in the first place.
Kathuria said that co-pilot Pradeep Rajput shared the same view. “She [Maria] was sure that the permission to undertake such a flight would not be given. The company involved in the plane’s repairs seems to have been incapable of detecting the technical snags that could have led to its crash,” Kathuria said.
