In rickety lifts in old buildings,
people sometimes could get trapped inside until some outside help saves them….
It is commonly held that in highways, especially, in night, cleaners are on
wheels while drivers would take rest…..we have had drivers driving recklessly,
some of them not possessing the valid license and not acquiring the required
skills; we have heard of trains having run some distance with none in
control…….. Bus drivers could miss the route and take you to a wrong
destination ~ buses could stop at unscheduled locations... et al….
It is jocularly told that some
would travel ‘without’ tickets on a train – when the Ticket Checking Examiner
turns, they would occupy the toilet – if doors are knocked, one ticket would be
shown from inside, while there could be more than one inside. !! – can you
imagine of people getting locked in the rest room of a train ? Air travel is the safest one – the navigation
is taken care of by experienced by Pilots assisted by Co-pilots and host of
electronic gadgets…………
This news item published in Daily
Mail UK of 15.5.13 would shake your confidence………… it is the news of an Air
India flight making emergency landing in Bhopal after pilot is locked out of
the cockpit. The news of Mail Today
Bureau states “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.
Because of this technical snag [!], flight
AI-403 from
New Delhi
to
Bangalore
had to be diverted to
Bhopal
.
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.
Civil Aviation Minister, Ajit Singh, said: 'We
have taken the incident seriously. The DGCA is investigating the matter'. 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 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 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.
The same incident is reported rather
differently in DNA [http://www.dnaindia.com/india/1834828/report-air-india-pilot-locked-inside-cockpit-emergency-lands-to-use-washroom]
It reads : The pilot of a Bangalore-bound Air
India
aircraft, with around 125 passengers on
board, landed under emergency conditions at
Bhopal
airport when he found the cockpit door
jammed as he tried to open it to visit the washroom, airline sources said
today. The pilot of Airbus A-320 wanted to go to the washroom but he found the
door locked, they said.
With regards –
S.
Sampathkumar
15th May 2013.