The clean chit given by the Director, Air Safety, DGCA to former MP Baijayant Panda vis-Ã -vis his chopper flying over the Chilika lake is a carefully-worded letter and is needed to come with more clarifications, Anil Dhir, a researcher, has viewed.
The Air Safety Director’s report observed that no violations of the DGCA rules and regulations committed by Panda during his flight.
“Based on fact and evidence, it could not be established that the helicopter has flown dangerously below the assigned altitude or have landed at Chilika lake on September 15, 2018,” the DGCA report said.
Dhir said the DGCA report is entirely based on what was told to them by Baijayant when he appeared before the authorities on the September 24.
“I was asked to submit documents related to flying timing and other details. I have submitted all the documents to the DGCA.
Before me, many people have flown in that area but no action was taken against him,” Baijayant had said after appearing before the DGCA.
Dhir said while the helicopter remained sealed in the hangar at Bhubaneswar, the Flight Data Recorder, the Cockpit Voice Recorder and the GPS have not been accessed.
The DGCA report based on the movement details of the R-44 helicopter, which had the clearance of its flight plan from the Flight Information Clearance and also had permission from the Air Defence Clearance (ADC) from the Military Liasoning Unit MLU (Indian Air Force) at Kolkata.
On September 18, Biju Patnaik International Airport Director SC Hota had said, “We cannot say whether Jay Panda flew over the restricted area or not, but he had certainly taken permission and given us his flight plan.
When an aircraft flies as low as 500-ft above the ground level, it is difficult to avail any data as we lose contact with the chopper after 10-15 miles according to the visual flight rules.
While we were asked to furnish information on whether there was any movement of any aircraft over Chilika, we had provided only this information as per our limits.”
While the Airport Director said it has no data on the flying height of the craft, some locals had seen the copter hovering at a low height which had caused ripples in the lake surface.
Supporting Puri SP Sarthak Sarangi contention that the Puri police would seek further clarification regarding the altitude of flying, Dhir said , “A Garmin GDU 700L TXI GPS fitted in VT-BDP chopper owned by Panda has a “save flight data” function and all data regarding time, position, altitude, direction and speed changes can be available if the function has not been disabled by Baijayant.
The data can easily be downloaded by an interface cable onto a laptop and the truth of his low flight proved.