Air India sacks the Phuket-Delhi captain after a confirmatory marijuana test

Air India terminated the pilot-in-command of flight AI2379 on Friday, 4 September, hours after the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau published a preliminary report on the 4 August Phuket-Delhi sector.

The airline named the issue, not the man, in its first line: "The Pilot-in-Command of the Phuket-Delhi flight tested positive for a psychoactive substance." It said employment was ended at once under a zero-tolerance rule on safety, fitness and regulatory breaches. India Today identified the captain as Sudeep Vasishtha. Sources who have seen the lab file said the confirmatory result was marijuana.

The aircraft was Airbus A320 VT-EXO. It was cruising at 36,000 feet with 145 people on board when all three hydraulic systems failed close together. The autopilot dropped out. A stall warning sounded. The aeroplane lost about 292 to 300 feet. Twenty-four people were injured, four of them seriously. The AAIB has not named a single cause. The preliminary paper puts the triple hydraulic loss and the captain's drug result on the same page and asks the Directorate General of Civil Aviation to act "on priority."

What the tests showed

Both pilots gave breath-analyser samples after landing in Delhi. Those were satisfactory. Both also gave samples for psychoactive substances. The captain's first result was non-negative. Blood from both men went to a designated laboratory. The captain's confirmatory test was again non-negative. The co-pilot was negative on both rounds.

"The confirmation of use of psychoactive substance is a serious concern," the AAIB wrote. It recommended "appropriate actions by DGCA on priority" to stop abuse of such substances. The investigation itself is still open. A preliminary report is not a final finding on why the hydraulics failed.

What the airline has changed

After the event Air India began voluntary drug testing of all its pilots. The company said crews already face training, proficiency checks and medicals under national and international rules. Those systems did not catch a captain who later tested non-negative after a sector that injured 24 people.

A hydraulic triple failure is a rare technical event. A positive drug test is a personnel event. Putting them in one preliminary report does not prove the second caused the first. It does put the captain's fitness on the record of an upset that passengers felt as a sudden drop. The DGCA now has the AAIB's request. Air India has already ended the contract. The technical file on VT-EXO's three hydraulic systems remains the part that has not been closed.