Kolkata: SpiceJet technician Rohit Pandey, who died while attending to an aircraft in Kolkata on July 10, lost his life because of lack of proper training and poor supervision, a Directorate General of Civil Aviation’s (DGCA) inquiry revealed.
Pandey was trapped after the landing gear door of the aircraft shut and died instantly, as the pressure inside rose to 2000-3000 PSI (pounds per square inch), which is impossible for the human body to sustain.
He was reportedly inserting a safety collar pin in the landing gear safety hole standing on the aircraft tyres instead of using the mandatory aircraft maintenance trestles when the accident took place.
A senior DCGA officer told News18 that after graduating from the Aircraft Maintenance Institute, Pandey had not undergone the compulsory theoretical training before being awarded the on job training certificate by SpiceJet. He had only done the training for maintenance and safety precautions (as per DGCA’s CAR-147) and trained on the field.
“The DGCA inquiry committee found that lack of training, poor supervision and ignorance towards basic safety manual led to the fatal mishap of Rohit Pandey,” the officer said.
The officer further pushed for questioning the supervisor under whom Pandey was working on that “ill-fated day”, saying that since he was recruited only a few months ago, he was not supposed to go to the landing area without supervision in the first place.
Likening the technical training to driving, the officer said that just as a novice driver would not be allowed to drive on a busy street, the new recruit should not have been tasked with inserting the safety collar pin to prevent the door from closing down.
“Untrained, poorly supervised and ignorant towards safety manuals led to this disaster,” he said.
Preliminary inquiry had revealed that there was no sign of hydraulic leakage which could have caused the mishap, as it sometimes leads to closing of landing gear doors.
“We are inspecting more on how the landing gear door was closed but one thing is clear-there was lack of supervision, poor training in this case,” the DGCA officer said.
The DGCA’s report on the incident revealed that on July 7, the flight that became the site of the accident had returned to bay number 32 at 3.55 pm due to a snag.
While being attended to for another glitch by a licensed engineer, it was pressurized to check the movement of flaps when the landing gear door shut, trapping Pandey.
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