Surprise check on Turkish Airlines plane finds explosives

NEW DELHI: India has issued a warning to Turkish Airlines, urging the carrier to strictly comply with rules after surprise inspections of its aircraft at four airports revealed lapses, including alleged carriage of explosives on one flight without disclosing the dangerous cargo.

DGCA carried out "safety oversight and ramp" inspections of the airline's passenger and cargo flights at Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai and Bengaluru from May 29 to June 2. Turkish's operations to India will be under the lens as DGCA will conduct follow-up inspections "as necessary to ensure continuous safety oversight".

"The cargo contained dangerous goods for which permission (is) required from DGCA for carriage of explosives to/from over India. This was not found to be attached nor was it mentioned in the dangerous goods declaration," aviation ministry said. "At Bengaluru, the marshaller handling ground operations lacked proper authorisation and a valid competency card for marshalling functions. During arrival of aircraft, maintenance engineer was unavailable, and the arrival procedure was carried out by a technician instead."

The check revealed there was no "service-level agreement in place between Turkish Airlines and its ground handling agent", and equipment "lacked proper accountability and monitoring", it added.

Senior officials said the checks were conducted on aircrafts operated by the airline.

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