More heads roll at Chinese airline over pilot who let young woman sit in cockpit during flight
- Air Guilin disciplines eight senior executives and asks regulator to remove pilot’s flying licence, according to internal memo
- Incident happened in January, but prompted an outcry this week when a photo of the student sitting in the pilot’s seat resurfaced on social media
The fallout from the case of a Chinese pilot who allowed a young woman to visit the cockpit during a flight earlier this year deepened on Tuesday with a number of senior executives being subject to disciplinary action.
A leaked directive from Air Guilin, published in the news portal Thepaper.cn, named the pilot for the first time as Su Chen and said the airline had urged the Civil Aviation Administration to revoke his pilot’s licence.
The previous day the airline, based in the southwestern region of Guangxi, confirmed that the incident had taken place on a flight between Guilin and Yangzhou, a city in Jiangsu province, early in January and said it had given the pilot a lifetime ban from flying.
The latest document also said that eight senior executives had been subject to disciplinary action. These included Yue Ding, the general manager in charge of flight operations, who was removed from his post, and Xu Xin, chairman of the airline, who was given a “serious warning”.
Six other senior executives – the general manager of the airline, deputy general manger in charge of plane maintenance, safety director, cabin and crew services general manager, aviation security general manager and safety inspection general manager – were all given a “serious demerit” in their record.
The executives who remained in their posts were also fined three month’s salary.