According to government sources, a meeting was held between DGCA and the two airlines, the only operators of B737 Max in India, on December 3 to decide “interim precautionary safety measures” with their operations and engineering team.
The airlines were advised to “train pilots on simulators to an exercise which replicates the Lion air crash scenario to the nearest possible extent”.
The Lion Air flight crashed on October 29, soon after taking off from Jakarta, killing all 189 on board. The crash happened due to lack of understanding of MCAS, the software on the aircraft that prevents it from stalling.
Government sources have said that B737 Max operators need to conduct “flight verification” before taking off the flight after “rectification of the snag”.
While India has never faced any such crash, the government believed it was important to issue instructions to the airlines.
The guidelines have been made based on the preliminary investigation done by Indonesia’s National Transport Safety Committee.
SpiceJet and Jet Airways own five B737 Max aircrafts each.
