Flights that none will fancy

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.
29/06/10 Abhijit Bhattacharyya/Sify.com

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Jun 2010