Sunday, November 28, 2010

Pilots who faked flying hrs now operating commercial flights



At least five of 14 ''under-trained'' pilots from the Rajasthan Aviation School may be flying hundreds of passengers on commercial airlines, police said on Friday.

An anti-corruption bureau probe has revealed these pilots, who were given flyng licences without fulfilling the requisite flying hours, were working with Indian AirlinesJetLite, SpiceJet and a few yet-to-be identified airline companies.

Addl SP, ACB, Bhupendra Yadav, who is investigating the case for the past five months, claimed that names of at least 14 pilots have come up who were issued CPLs (commercial pilot licence) fraudulently by chief flying inspectors of the Rajasthan state flying school, Sanganer Airport, Mohindar Kumar Chaudhary and his counterpart atHaryana Institute of Civil Aviation, Hisar, Mahavir Singh Beniwal.

The additional general manager of Sanganer International Airport's air traffic control Manoj Jain was also suspected to have colluded with the the two. The three officers are now in judicial custody.

''Preliminary investigations suggest that at least five of the 14 persons including Rahul Yadav, Anup Chaudhary, Amit Mundra, Nitin Jain and Rajesh Marani are working as pilots with airline companies including Indian Airlines, SpiceJet and JetLite,'' said Bhupendra Yadav. He said that others including Neeraj Kumar, Sahil Malik, Priyeta Sharma, Sanjeev Gupta, Rajesh Mehta and Nidhi Vashistha are either engineers or are working in various departments of airline companies.

One Pallavi Hemaserg is working as an assistant pilot instructor in Nagpur. While Manoj Dhaka has migrated abroad, one Sumit Jain is said to be unemployed at present. ACB has already arrested one of these trainees, Rahul Yadav, who claims to have already flown 1,000 hours. ''These pilots will be arrested in course of investigation