DGCA made contract staff ‘scapegoats’ by blaming them for IndiGo fiasco, alleges aviation expert

Lazar, an advocate and the CEO of Avialaz Consultants, said he was initially happy to learn that action had been initiated against these officials. Later, he realised that they were actually“low hanging fruit” and billed them ‘Bali ka Bakra.” “I got to know only this morning that one of them, Pokhariyal, had resigned a couple of months ago,” he claimed. He has been diagnosed with cancer during and was hospitalised.Calling Captain Kaushik a hero, Lazar recalled a 2016 incident when a Jet Airways flight from Bengaluru to Mangaluru caught fire mid-air. “With one engine on fire, he landed the aircraft safely and saved 65 lives. He also led the first Kaveri operations from Sudan to Chennai during the 2023 repatriation mission,” he said.Lazar added that the Captain, who is the son of a Defence Officer, told him during his interaction that he was not even involved in this as he was an ‘Alternate Inspector’ (deployed when regular inspector is not available). “I have been here only 6 or 8 months. I have neither been assigned any work in Indigo nor have I been called up,” Captain Kaushik told him, Lazar added.The expert also added that the Captain’s wife expressed her anguish over the fact that ever since his name was made public, her kids found it difficult to even step out.Regarding Captain Chatterjee, Lazar said that he served as the Deputy Chief Pilot of Vistara “He has a spotless, blameless record and he flew the 787s. The Captain had actually flagged the lapses at IndiGo to the regulator in a mail and was the first to alert them that 1,200 flights had not operated in November, the expert said.



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