A team of senior officials from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation left for Lucknow today to ascertain whether the delay of Indian Airlines Delhi-Lucknow (IC 601) flight on Thursday could have been averted.The seven-hour delay resulted in Brij Mohan Bhama, a Rajya Sabha aspirant from the Congress, missing the 3 p.m. deadline for filing his nomination papers at Lucknow. An upset Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel ordered a high-level DGCA inquiry into the matter last evening.The probe, sources said, would examine all records including minute-by-minute details available with the air traffic controls at both Delhi and Lucknow. The broader objective will be to find out whether the delay was a result of a series of coincidental events and if enough was done to reduce the delay period.Some issues which emerged in the preliminary inquiries on Thursday, and would be thoroughly investigated in the course of investigation are: • The flight was delayed by 30 minutes right at start, giving enough time to the maintenance staff to check the aircraft. But the problem with green hydraulic system was detected at around 9:15 a.m. after the plane was cleared and was, infact, taxiing towards the runway.• An hour later, the passengers were shifted to another Airbus 320 which too had some trouble starting up. This apparently contributed to the delay. Eventually, it took off around noon. Once again the maintenance issues will need to be examined.• Every plane is supposed to carry enough fuel to hover above its destination for 30 minutes and return to its point of origin. This flight hovered for 10 minutes before returning to Delhi.• A pilot can ask for change of runway. While the visibility on the runway in use had dropped below the minima of 2,400 metres, lower visibility landing (up to a minima of 1,200 metres) was possible on the other runway where sophisticated instrument landing system is installed. That the pilot decided against it is also an issue expected to crop up during the inquiry.On its part, the Indian Airlines has maintained silence saying the issue was being investigated. However, sources said, there was no ‘‘conspiracy’’ behind the delay.
