BSF pilot has cautioned that planes of several VIPs, including Home Minister Rajnath Singh, have been flown by trainee pilots, according to Indian Express report. Apart from this, he alleged that aircraft are not being maintained properly. Wing Commander Yogesh Kumar Daksh said these in a letter dated August 15. In the he also said that standard operating procedures of flying and safety not being followed. The letter, which was addressed to the BSF’s IG (Air), reveals that since June 2015, not a single flight safety meeting has been held. It also states the Air Wing does not even conduct pre-flight medical check-ups of pilots. In the name of base operations, it has a telephone operator doubling up as control room, Daksh said in a letter.
On July 4 this year, MoS Home Kiren Rijiju had a harrowing experince when his Mi-17 helicopter made an emergency landing in Arunachal Pradesh due to bad weather. A senior BSF officer, however, said the uncategorised pilot who flew Rijiju on July 4 had five years of experience in flying and so could not be called “unsafe”. “But yes, we do have a problem of crew. We don’t have enough people. And so we have to make do with uncategorised pilots,” the officer said.
On pilots, the letter said the “aircrew are frequently tasked to fly with uncategorised pilots”. Besides the Rijiju incident, the letter mentions that a year ago, on October 2, 2016, when the Director General of the Bangladesh Rifles or Border Guards Bangladesh was on a visit to India, he was flown in a chopper where both the pilots were uncategorised. According to the letter, it points out there is no operations base at Safdarjung airport in Delhi. “There is a telephone operator in the control room at SAP, Delhi who is clueless about the aircrew and flying requirements,” the letter says.