Indian budget airline IndiGo has reportedly dismissed two pilots after they nearly landed a plane on a roadway earlier this year, incorrectly believing it was a runway.
The incident, The Wall Street Journalreports, occurred in late February with the aircraft just a few hundred feet from landing on a road that runs near Jaipur airport, which serves the capital of the Indian state Rajasthan. The pilots were suspended from duty following a two-month probe.
The low-cost airline’s near-miss is the latest in a series of woes for the Indian aviation industry. WSJ notes a few others in recent months, including a tire burst for a carrier as it was landing in Mumbai’s international airport, an emergency landing by an Air India plane after its cockpit windscreen cracked, and the death of a Air India ground brew member after he was sucked into an aircraft engine.
Worries about the safety of India’s aviation industry led the Federal Aviation Administration to downgrade India’s status in early 2014, which essentially barred the nation’s airlines from adding new flights to the U.S. That ranking was lifted in April 2015 as the U.S. lauded steps the Indian government took to correct safety oversight issues, though the details of those actions weren’t made public.
