India's aviation regulator has directed airlines to conduct a one-time drug test on all pilots by July next year, according to a government official, following recent cases of crew being found under the influence. Testing across carriers is already underway, the official told reporters in New Delhi, asking not to be named pending a formal announcement by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.
The directive follows a freak outage of all three hydraulic systems on the Air India-operated Airbus SE A320 — a malfunction considered virtually impossible in an aircraft built with multiple layers of redundancy. The failure caused the autopilot to disengage and the plane to drop about 300 feet.
After the flight from Phuket landed in India on Aug. 4, the captain tested positive for illegal drugs. Investigations have not established whether the pilot's condition contributed to the mid-air plunge, but an interim report released last Friday by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau called the drug-use discovery a “serious concern” and urged the regulator to take “appropriate actions” urgently.
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Air India Ltd. had also announced a one-time drug testing of all its pilots after the incident and the aviation regulator is also in discussion with the airlines to strengthen the current rules on drug testing. Separately, Malaysia Airlines introduced mandatory drug testing in August after a cockpit crew member was arrested for alleged smuggling of narcotics.
The draft rules on the “amended drug tests rules for pilots” will be finalized by the month-end, India's Civil Aviation Minister Kinjarapu Rammohan Naidu told reporters in New Delhi.
While he did not elaborate on the proposed changes, these changes are expected to provide a more stringent framework for testing pilots for psychoactive substances and make the process applicable more comprehensively across the airline industry.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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