It has been more than a month since an Air India Express flight crashed in Mangalore, killing all but 8 of the 166 passengers onboard. This is thus the right time to indulge in a critical appraisal of the nature of civil aviation in India. In the course of such an exercise, numerous questions are bound to cross one’s mind. What ails non-military aviation in India? Can the problems be attributed to the chronic failures at the level of policy? Are the rapid expansion of air routes and the absence of professional training and guidance to be blamed?
In fact, since the Mangalore crash, the media have reported a number of disturbing incidents involving passenger aircraft: engine failures, possible mid-air collisions, tyres bursting during take-off runs, pilot indiscipline and defiance of air traffic controllers’ orders, glitches on the part of the air traffic communication system in Mumbai, breach of airport security and so on. Is there a way out of this morass?
Charity, it is said, begins at home. There is no point in blaming the minions if the masters themselves fail to show the way. The Mangalore incident was entirely avoidable. The aircraft was new, airworthy and in perfect shape. Visibility was satisfactory, as the rain had stopped falling before the flight touched down. The morning was calm. Wind and temperature posed no problems. Yet, the plane crashed because the Serbian pilot reportedly committed an error in judgment: he overshot the touchdown point, then tried to veer around but failed to lift the plane. Consequently, the aircraft swerved away from the runway at a speed higher than that is stipulated in the operational manual and plummeted down a cliff at the end of the strip.
Hence, the crash was blamed on the pilot’s ‘misjudgment’. But the pilot is dead, and the matter ends there. The more important question is why did the pilot go wrong? What could have been the allied factors that led to the crash? These questions will remain unanswered, perhaps to safeguard the interests of those occupying the higher rungs of the civil aviation command structure. The higher-ups are the lords of all that they survey, and lack technical knowledge or even the willingness to master it. They need not be told the inconvenient truth. That would be detrimental to the motives of those who rule this prosperous empire, which, thus far, has grown rapidly. In reality, therefore, one of the biggest hurdles to passenger safety in the Indian sky continues to be the semi-professional and feudal conduct of those in positions of power in the concerned department.
Added to this is the existence of corruption that seems to be affecting the lower tiers, thereby weakening the foundations of the aviation sector. Be it land scams pertaining to airport construction or the repeated failures of the concerned authorities to control the illegal activities of operators, corruption of all types continue to undermine the possibility of instituting a safe and secure air traffic system. In fact, India’s aviation sector continues to remain vulnerable to the pressure exerted by politicians and entrepreneurs. Hence, more often than not, complaints surface regarding the lack of transparency in awarding licences and in the allotment of timetables and routes. The malady is now deeply embedded, and there is no cure in sight.
Given the present circumstances, a number of factors continue to worry conscientious members of the aviation fraternity as far as the future of Indian aviation is concerned. Aviation experts in India are worried about the linguistic proficiency of non-English-speaking expatriate pilots, their training backgrounds, experience in handling aircraft and their records pertaining to flying hours.
After the leased Uzbekistan airlines flight met with an accident on the Delhi airport runway some years ago, it was found that the pilot, who hailed from the Central Asian republic, was weak in English, which is the universally accepted language of communication in aviation circles. Similarly, the worst mid-air collision over Delhi — an accident involving Saudi Arabian and Kazakhstan aircraft — had exposed, once again, the inability of the non-English-speaking pilots to understand the commands issued by the Indian air traffic controller regarding altitude, direction, speed and positional awareness.
The shortcomings in India’s pilot- training programme are also well known to the bosses. The violation of various types of rules and regulations are evident to the regulators. Yet, totally avoidable mishaps continue with potentially disastrous consequences. Thus, when an Indian Airlines flight tried to take off from the Aurangabad airport on a hot summer afternoon in 1993, it failed to obtain the height required to clear a stationary truck parked outside the airfield and rammed into a high-tension wire, killing a number of passengers. A subsequent inquiry had put the blame on the “overloaded” aircraft. The commercial department personnel, it was stated, had failed to do their job of checking the weight and balance of the operational aircraft.
Today, it is being said that pilot error caused the air crash in Mangalore. This is similar to the reason that was cited after a crash in Bangalore in February 1990. It was subsequently found that Captain C.A. Fernandez and Captain S.S. Gopujkar had violated the standard operating procedure for landing, thereby failing to adhere to the widely accepted safety rules about breaking off an approach if a plane is losing altitude too quickly or has too much speed just before landing, is positioned dangerously short of the runway or is overshooting the spot of touchdown.
In the past, another extraordinary example of the callous Indian attitude had come to light. This pertained to the breaching of an accepted international aviation procedure. Unlike American carriers, Indian pilots used to switch different jetliner models during the same duty period. This needs to be stopped at once. Steps have to be taken to ensure that a pilot is comfortable, and at his best, when he is behind the controls.
No comments:
Post a Comment