The ministry of civil aviation has launched a drive to monitor airlines for carrying excess cargo weight than declared in the invoice of courier companies.

According to official sources, the Minister of State for Civil Aviation Rajiv Pratap Rudy has issued orders to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation to take necessary action against airlines found flouting the laws.

Under the minister's directive, the DGCA has already conducted a couple of surprise raids this month in Mumbai and Delhi airports.

"The issue of carrying excess unauthorised baggage is an extremely serious offense especially in a passenger aircraft. Carrying more load than that specified as maximum payload may even cause an accident during landing or take-off," said official sources. 

In the raids conducted by the DGCA, it found discrepancies between the load level declared and the actual cargo weight in an Indian Airlines flight on the Mumbai-Chennai sector as well as a Jet Airways flight. A total of 25 flights, 10 in Mumbai and 15 in Delhi were checked by the DGCA officials.        

Officials said the most common reason for such behaviour was due to the under invoicing resorted to by some courier companies.

They said that these companies obviously benefited from the arrangement as they paid for the cargo in terms of weight. The courier companies apparently paid off some officials of the airlines as part of the deal.

According to the existing norms, an aircraft having more than its maximum permissible weight can be prevented from taking off.

As per the civil aviation requirements issued by the DGCA, the airlines are supposed to carry out regular checks to tally the weight of cargo or mail in the aircraft with that given in the cargo manifest or invoice.

The maximum payload of an aircraft is generally determined on a variety of factors such as the make of the aircraft, the runway conditions, the flight conditions and the like.

Rudy has asked the DGCA to conduct frequent raids at airports across the country, especially the major metro airports.

The DGCA has also been asked to review the existing rules and have more specific punitive measures in place.