The seven-seater King Air C-90 aircraft of the Punjab government, which crashed on this day last year, met with the accident due to its pilots’ error, says the inquiry report submitted by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation to the state government.

The report, a copy of which is with The Indian Express, says though the aircraft was airworthy when it had taken off, the organisation (Punjab government) did not maintain a defect register. “This raises doubt whether the aircraft had defects that were not revealed,” it says.

In another finding, the DGCA says the King Air C-90 plane was endorsed on the Indian licence of co-pilot Manjit Singh Khokhar on the basis of a wrong declaration furnished by M/s Ran Air about his flying experience.

It was stated that Khokhar had 100 hours of flying experience on King Air C-90, but he had actually never flown this type of aircraft.

Though his performance during the skill checks was found to be satisfactory, he had mostly flown 1900 D aircraft with an entirely different cockpit.

The other pilot, Dalip Kataria, is under scanner too, as the report says the renewal of his Indian Airline Transport Pilot Licence was not done by the DGCA-nominated examiner. Also, the report adds, the Punjab government had submitted that Kataria underwent a familiarisation flight with Capt Nanda, the executive pilot of Haryana government, but Nanda denied this.

Kataria had only eight hours of experience on this kind of aircraft, according to the DGCA, which also points out that the records regarding updating the global positioning system (GPS) data were not available, though the crew (pilots) were estimating their position based on the GPS.

... contd.