- Tata's Air India faces intense scrutiny after the June accident.
- India's budget carrier stopped to delay changes in the parties.
- Airline says he took corrective measures, suspended a manager.
The Aviation gift of India rebuked the Indian Budget airline in March for not changing the engine parts of an Airbus A320 as indicated by the Aviation Security Agency of the European Union and falsifies the records to show compliance, showed a government memorandum.
In a statement, said Air India Express Reuters He recognized the error to the Indian guard dog and performed “corrective action and preventive measures.”
Air India has been under intense scrutiny since the June Dreamliner clash of June in Ahmedabad, who killed everyone but one of the 242 people on board. The worst aviation disaster in the world in a decade is still being investigated.
The engine problem at the Airbus of Air India Express was raised on March 18, months before the accident. But the regulator has also warned the Air India matrix for violating the rules to fly three Airbus aircraft with backward controls in the exhaust slides, and in June he warned him about “serious violations” of pilot work times.
Air India Express is a subsidiary of Air India, owned by the Tata Group. It has more than 115 aircraft and flies to more than 50 destinations, with 500 daily flights.
The Aviation Security Agency of the European Union in 2023 issued an aircraft directive to address an “insecure potential condition” in the CFM International Leap-1A engines, requesting the replacement of some components, such as motor seals and rotating parts, saying that some manufacturing deficiencies had been found.
The agency's directive said that “this condition, if it was not corrected, could lead to the failure of the affected parties, possibly resulting in a release of high -energy rubble, with the consequent damage and reduced control of the plane.”
The confidential memorandum of the Indian government in March sent to the airline, seen by ReutersHe said that the surveillance of the General Directorate of Civil Aviation (DGCA) revealed the modification of pieces “was not fulfilled” in an engine of an Airbus A320 “within the prescribed time limit.”
“To demonstrate that the work has been carried out within the prescribed limits, the registers of masters have apparently altered/forged,” added the memorandum, referring to the maintenance software and operating system of aircraft engineering used by the airlines to manage maintenance and aircraft.
The “mandatory” modification was required on the VT-ATD India Express VT-Ade plane, the memorandum added. That plane usually flies on national routes and some international destinations such as Dubai and Muscat, according to the airnav radar website.
The period “indicates that the responsible manager has not been able to guarantee quality control,” he added.
Air India Express said Reuters His technical team lost the scheduled implementation date for the replacement of pieces due to the migration of records in their monitoring software, and solved the problem shortly after identification.
He did not directly comply with the DGCA comment on the records that are altered, but said that after the March memorandum he took “necessary administrative actions”, which included eliminating the quality manager of his position and suspending the Administrator of Vulsers continuously attached.
The DGCA and the European Security Agency did not respond to Reuters Consultations.
Airbus and CFM International, a joint company between General Electric and Safran, also did not respond.
The period was first marked during a DGCA audit in October 2024 and the plane in question only made a few trips after it was supposed to replace the pieces of the CFM engine, according to a source with direct knowledge.
“Such problems should be solved immediately. It is a serious mistake. The risk increases when it flies through the sea or almost restricted Airpsace,” said Vibhuti Singh, a former legal expert at the Indian Aircraft Accident Research Office.
The Indian government told Parliament in February that the authorities warned or fined the airlines in 23 cases for security violations last year. Three of those cases involved Air India Express and eight Air India.
