Pilot locked out,emergency landing at Bhopal

[galaxy]

Air India lived up to its rather dubious reputation once again as another incident in the air created panic among the passengers on board and forced an emergency landing.

The national carrier's flight AI-403 from New Delhi to Bangalore on Monday evening had to be diverted to Bhopal after the Captain was locked out of the cockpit because of a technical snag.


The Airbus A-320, with 135 passengers on board, landed at Bhopal's Raja Bhoj Airport under emergency conditions where the passengers remained stranded for over two hours.

Almost an hour after the flight took off from Delhi, the pilot, who had come out of the cockpit for a toilet break, found its door jammed when he went back to take his seat. The Captain called the crew members for help, but they failed to open the door, said an Air India official who did not want to be named.
According to sources in the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in New Delhi, the cockpit door locked shut and failed to open despite all efforts as the rivet was not working properly. However, as the Captain and the crew gathered out the cockpit, the passengers started panicking.

A senior DGCA official said: "This was something unheard of. Fortunately, no one was hurt. But the passengers pressed the panic button. No one would have imagined this to happen, including the main flight commander.

"After all attempts to open the cockpit door failed, the copilot, who was inside the cockpit, decided to make an emergency landing in Bhopal," the official added.

The co-pilot was forced to go for an emergency landing as he was only left with a trainee pilot in the cockpit who was not equipped to handle the route.

"The co-pilot also realised that the passengers were getting jittery," the DGCA official said.

The co-pilot radioed ground control and explained the situation. The ATC immediately alerted Bhopal's Raja Bhoj Airport which made all necessary arrangements for an emergency landing.

"However, the plane made a soft landing at the airport," Vivek Upadhyay, director of the Bhopal airport, said.


The local AI engineers took about an hour to rectify the snag.

"It took more than 30 minutes to open the jammed door. After two hours, the flight took off," Firoz Khan, Air India's station manager at Bhopal airport, said.

The AI-403 flight is a premium, direct flight on Delhi- Bangalore route.


"The passengers on board got delayed by almost two hours and as the flight took off from Bhopal only around 8pm. There were passengers waiting at Bangalore for return journey to Delhi,'' said the DGCA official adding.

The cockpit door blunder was the latest in a string of safety related incidents involving Air India. On April 12, a Bangkok-New Delhi flight saw two air hostesses getting locked with the pilots in the cockpit, and even occupying the Captain's seat briefly, posing a big safety risk to the passengers.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/in ... z2TM1KJJU2

[earthman]

Well they should make the doors in such a way that it is very easy to open them from the inside if the lock mechanism malfunctions. I am not sure how the door hinges are protected.

[KriVa]

I am not familiar with Airbus doors, so I'll have to use the Boeing analogy here.
IF the cockpit door on the Airbus operates in the same way, and has the same sort of safety systems built in as the doors on Boeing, they should be quite easy to open from inside the cockpit, even when the door is jammed.