It's a miracle planes land safely in India

Mumbai: The monsoon this year has caused casualties of a new kind. There have been nine aviation accidents or incidents at various Indian airports in the last three months - most of them caused by that fatal combination of heavy rain and short runways. It was these two factors that caused the Tam Airbus to crash in Sao Paulo on Wednesday, killing 200 people.
The consensus in the aviation industry is that the two most unsafe airports in the country are those at Pune and Patna. However, it's not as if the rest are up to standard.
The fact is that most of India's 200-plus airports have landing strips that fall short of the 9000-foot safety benchmark. During the dry months, this does not really make a difference - after all, thousands of flights arrive safely every day - but come the thundershowers and suddenly the lack of inches is acutely felt.
With so negligible a margin for error, an aircraft can easily overshoot the slippery strip of tarmac. Even the country's so-called long runways aren't up to scratch. Says an A320 check pilot,"In the Emirates Operations Manual, the example of a bad runway is Mumbai airport runway 27."
Singapore Airlines too does not land on Mumbai airport's runway 14 as it has been classified 'sub-standard'.
20/07/07 Manju V/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Jul 2007, Safety Jul 2007