The incident involving a private aircraft carrying Congress president Rahul Gandhi from Delhi to Hubbali in April did suddenly lose height but “was survivable.”

The finding of the final report on the ‘Ligare Aviation Falcon 2000 aircraft,’ was made public on Friday. The report also says that the aircraft took off from Delhi around 9:23 pm and the flight was uneventful. About 100 minutes into the flight, the pilot in command (PIC) requested the Hyderabad Air Traffic Controller for a direct routing.

Autopilot disengaged

The incident was caused as the ‘yaw dampner failed’ indication flashed on the Primary Flight Display and the auto-pilot got disengaged. “Both the pilots were busy in isolating the auto-pilot failure and did not realise that the aircraft had gone into the right bank. After 15 seconds, the bank angle warning got activated and the crew realised that the aircraft has gone into a bank,” the final report says.

The incident saw the aircraft go into an excessive bank of around 65 degrees before the pilot in command took manual control, the report adds.

Pilots told BusinessLine that the yaw is the fish in the tail of the aircraft which moves left and right. The flight went from 41,000 feet from the time it took off to 40,265 feet after the incident.

Putting into context the banking of the aircraft, a pilot said that this meant that the aircraft had turned 65 degrees to the right from where it was earlier.

After the incident, the Congress had said that it suspected the aircraft carrying Rahul was intentionally tampered with and demanded an investigation into the matter. A letter sent by the party to the DG and IG, Karnataka said it had developed “unexplained technical failures” during the flight.

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