A disaster waiting in the wings?

Statistics show there has been no fatal accident involving a commercial airliner in India since 17 July 2000, when an Alliance Air Boeing 737 approaching Patna airport crashed in a residential neighbourhood, killing 58 people in an accident the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) blamed on crew not following “the correct approach procedure”.
But in the almost 10 years since then, there have been several close shaves in an aviation market that’s boomed in that time. The regulator ascribed some of the escapes to sheer good fortune.
Every day, some 3,500 civilian flights criss-cross the Indian skies, a number that has nearly doubled from 1,900 just five years ago, according to DGCA, as a growing economy, rising incomes and low air fares prompt more people to fly.
India’s aviation market has doubled in four years from 22.30 million passengers in 2005 to 44 million in 2009. The fleet strength of scheduled domestic airlines has more than doubled to 400 from 160 in 2005.
At the time of the Alliance Air crash, only four domestic passenger carriers were operating in the country—state-run Indian Airlines and Air India (which have since merged), Air Sahara (now JetLite) and Jet Airways. Alliance Air was a subsidiary of Indian Airlines and has also been absorbed in Air India.
Since 2004, they have been joined by Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, InterGlobe Aviation Pvt. Ltd-run IndiGo, SpiceJet Ltd, GoAir (India) Pvt. Ltd and Paramount Airways Pvt. Ltd.
The number of aircraft-related incidents has kept pace, rising from 806 in 2005-06 to 1,132 in 2008-09, according to DGCA.
The number of “near miss” incidents rose to 20 from 14 in the same period, according to available DGCA data for 2005-06 and a DGCA official who didn’t want to be named.
DGCA information accessed by Mint suggests there were four serious accidents and five serious incidents in 2009, besides around 1,000 incidents.
“Near misses have been high because the safety apparatus is not geared up for (the growing volume of) traffic,” says Sanat Kaul, a former joint secretary in the ministry of civil aviation who also represented India at the International Civil Aviation Organization, the United Nations-affiliated global body for aviation safety.
11/02/10 Tarun Shukla/Live Mint

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Categories: Safety Feb 2010