Air India has terminated the employment of the pilot-in-command who operated a turbulent flight from Phuket to Delhi on August 4, acting swiftly following the release of an interim inquiry report by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau. The investigative findings revealed that the senior aviator tested non-negative for psychoactive substances during post-flight screening, prompting the national safety investigator to urge the Directorate General of Civil Aviation to initiate urgent regulatory enforcement. The disciplinary action by the Tata Group-owned airline comes exactly a month after the scheduled international flight, designated AI-2379, experienced an acute in-flight altitude excursion over eastern India that left twenty-four passengers and crew members injured and caused extensive damage to the aircraft’s interior cabin fittings.
The incident occurred while the twin-engine Airbus A320neo, registered as VT-EXO and carrying one hundred and forty-five people, was maintaining a steady cruising altitude of 36,000 feet within the Kolkata Flight Information Region. Having transitioned over the Bay of Bengal and crossing the Odisha coastline, the modern airliner was initially believed by authorities and passengers to have encountered severe, unforeseen atmospheric turbulence. However, subsequent flight data recordings downloaded from the digital flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder revealed an altogether different and technically harrowing sequence of events. Over an extraordinarily brief five-second window, the aircraft suffered an unprecedented cascading loss of pressure across its three primary hydraulic circuits—the green, blue, and yellow lines—a mechanical condition long regarded across commercial aviation engineering as a statistical rarity.
Modern Airbus fly-by-wire jets rely on these three independent hydraulic systems to actuate crucial flight control surfaces, including elevators, ailerons, rudders, and spoilers. At 04:02:43 UTC, onboard monitoring computers registered a sudden drop in pressure within the green hydraulic system. Four seconds later, identical pressure drops crippled both the yellow and blue hydraulic networks simultaneously. The total temporary loss of hydraulic pressure immediately disabled the automatic flight guidance system, disengaging the autopilot and triggering continuous audio warning chimes across the flight deck alongside an abrupt two-second aerodynamic stall warning. Deprived of primary control surface responsiveness for roughly four seconds, the aircraft experienced an erratic altitude upset, ascending sharply by 372 feet before plunging 292 feet below its assigned flight level.
Because the flight was in smooth cruising conditions at high altitude, the cabin seatbelt signs had been switched off, permitting passengers and cabin attendants to move freely along the aisles. The violent pitching movements hurled unbuckled passengers and operating crew members forcefully toward the ceiling panels and stowage compartments. The physical trauma within the passenger cabin was acute: twenty passengers and four cabin crew members suffered injuries ranging from deep lacerations and blunt-force trauma to severe spinal compression, with four individuals requiring immediate emergency hospitalization upon arrival. Inside the cabin, overhead luggage bins were ripped loose, ceiling tiles cracked across multiple seating rows, an emergency exit handle broke off, a flight attendant jumpseat frame was bent out of shape, and a lavatory commode was uprooted from its floor mountings by the violent acceleration forces.
Onboard telemetry indicates that the blue hydraulic circuit spontaneously regained operating pressure around seven seconds after the initial failure, followed in rapid succession by the yellow and green systems. This prompt self-recovery enabled normal flight control surfaces to restore trim and stability. The co-pilot, who was operating as the pilot flying during that sector, responded immediately to counter the pitch excursions before the pilot-in-command took over manual control of the controls. Rather than declaring an operational emergency and executing an immediate diversion to nearby coastal airfields such as Bhubaneswar, Kolkata, or Raipur, the operating flight crew elected to proceed with their scheduled flight plan to the national capital. The pilots later contacted Delhi Air Traffic Control to request priority landing clearance and arranged for tarmac medical assistance, touching down safely on Runway 11L at Indira Gandhi International Airport roughly an hour later.
Upon arrival in Delhi, both operating pilots were subjected to standard post-flight medical assessments and mandatory breathalyzer examinations to detect alcohol impairment, which returned negative results for both crew members. However, authorities also administered specialized screenings using psychoactive substance detection kits to analyze bodily fluids. While the first officer cleared the psychoactive substance screening without irregularity, the captain’s sample returned a non-negative result. Subsequent secondary laboratory examinations involving confirmatory blood analyses corroborated the presence of prohibited psychoactive compounds, identified by preliminary investigation sources as marijuana metabolites.
The aviation accident bureau emphasized in its preliminary report that the verified presence of psychoactive substances in an active airline captain operating a commercial passenger flight represented a profound safety violation. The bureau officially recommended that the aviation regulator take decisive priority action to curb substance abuse within the commercial piloting cadre. Air India’s management moved immediately to terminate the captain’s contractual employment with immediate effect, pointing to an uncompromising zero-tolerance policy regarding medical unfitness, flight safety non-compliance, and regulatory breaches. Seeking to reassure the flying public and demonstrate operational integrity, the airline also announced that it has initiated voluntary, company-wide screening across one hundred percent of its active pilot roster.
Beyond the personnel dimensions of the case, technical investigators are conducting an exhaustive examination into the root cause of the sudden hydraulic system failure. The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau has enlisted technical specialists from Airbus headquarters and France’s Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety to analyze dismantled hydraulic components and fluid samples removed from the affected jetliner. Investigators are paying close attention to an operational maintenance record indicating that the aircraft had departed Phuket under an authorized Minimum Equipment List dispatch exemption related to its Power Transfer Unit, which had been deferred about a week before the incident. While flying under such temporary exemptions is standard practice within civil aviation, investigators are evaluating whether pressure fluctuations between auxiliary systems interacted with prevailing electrical actuators to generate the momentary pressure drop.
The preliminary report clarifies that investigators have not established a direct causal link between the captain’s drug screening result and the aircraft’s brief hydraulic failure, as primary handling during the upset was initially initiated by the co-pilot. Nevertheless, the simultaneous emergence of an extraordinary multi-system mechanical malfunction and gross behavioral impairment in command has placed India's civil aviation ecosystem under heightened regulatory focus. The incident serves as a stark reminder of the rigorous physical, psychological, and technical redundancies required to guarantee modern aviation safety, highlighting how quickly routine commercial travel can unravel when mechanical margins and human discipline are compromised simultaneously.