By IANS,
Mumbai/Kozhikode : An enquiry report has said that Kerala MP P.V. Abdul Wahab had entered the cockpit of an Indian Airlines flight at Kozhikode airport April 7 even as Wahab said Monday he would not apologise for his alleged misbehaviour towards the flight’s pilot.
According to sources, the enquiry conducted by the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security said that the MP had violated civil aviation rules by entering the cockpit. The sources said that the cabin crew chief on the flight also confirmed in a written response that Wahab had indeed stormed the cockpit.
Post the 9/11 terror attacks in the US, aviation security rules across the world have become quite stringent.
However, an Air India spokesman said that the airline has not carried out any inquiry as suggested by a section of the media.
Wahab had to disembark from the Kozhikode-Kochi Indian Airlines flight en route to Dubai after an altercation with the pilot, Captain Rajat Rana.
Wahab told reporters in Kozhikode that pilots are “using their organisational strength to terrorise”.
Wahab, a Muslim League Rajya Sabha member, has threatened to move a privilege motion in parliament against the pilot.
“I am not in anyway obliged to bow my head before them. If they are ready to enquire in a proper way as to what happened at the airport, I am ready to cooperate. They said that I would be blacklisted or put in the list of terrorists,” Wahab said.
“Is the pilots’ association authorised to find out who is a terrorist and who is not? I don’t know,” he said.
The Indian Commercial Pilots Association said it planned to file a defamation suit against Wahab for calling a pilot a “glorified driver”.
Wahab said he would decide on the issue of privilege motion after consulting his party leaders.
Responding to the allegation that he entered the cockpit, he said he did not go even close to it.
“I reached the airport on time. They took me to the aircraft. The pilot came out of the cockpit and stood preventing my entry in to the aircraft and chided the duty manager in front of me forcing me to intervene. The pilot did not like my intervention and talked to me in a disparaging way, knowing fully well that I am a people’s representative. I only told the pilot that his conduct was not right,” Wahab said.