'Crewed' lessons

On-board incidents point to poor training

For the Indian aviation industry, 2022-23 is looking like a year of soaring growth with the number of passengers set to overtake the pre-Covid year of 2019-20. This encouraging news has been leavened by frustratingly long lines at airports, near misses in the air, and mishaps from poorly maintained aircraft that resulted in the grounding of several of them by the aviation regulator. All of this pointed to growing safety risks in the air that have concentrated the minds of airlines, the ministry, and the regulator. Several on-board incidents over the past month, however, have highlighted a less acknowledged risk