Bhopal: Eight months after an uninsured aircraft owned by the Madhya Pradesh government crash-landed at the Gwalior airbase, the state government has handed out an Rs 85-crore bill for damages to Captain Majid Akhtar, the pilot who was flying the aircraft on May 6. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) had suspended Akhtar’s flying licence for a year. The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau is probing the crash-landing.
The Bhopal-based pilot has a flying experience of 27 years. He was dubbed a Covid warrior for flying the state-owned aircraft while wearing a PPE kit to transport Covid samples for testing outside the state. He also brought life-saving drugs and other consumables for patients in MP during the first and second waves.
The nine-seater Beechcraft King aircraft which crash-landed in Gwalior airbase on May 6, 2021, was transporting life-saving medicines, including 71 boxes of Remdisivir injections, from Indore. The aircraft was purchased by the MP government for Rs 65 crore in 2019.
The state government has claimed that the plane became unworthy of flying after the accident, owing to which the government had to spend Rs 25 crore to hire planes from private operators. The charge sheet, however, has no mention of how the aircraft was allowed to fly without following mandatory insurance protocols. Sources said had the aircraft been duly insured, the government could have recovered the cost after the crash-landing made it unworthy of flying.
In his reply to the charge sheet, Akhtar claimed the accident was caused by the arrestor barrier on the runway, about which the Air Traffic Control failed to inform him. While citing his flight record of 27 years, Akhtar submitted that he wasn’t provided with the contents of the aircraft’s black box, which contains all the instructions received from the Gwalior ATC. He said he shouldn’t be held guilty until the completion of a DGCA probe.