I still remember my first air journey; I was sitting with my fingers crossed for two hours in midair until my flight landed. But after the recent Mangalore air crash that killed 160 people, something tells me that rather than the journey itself, it’s the landing and takeoff that are more dangerous on Indian airports.
History of air accidents in India is replete with instances of the blame game. Here’s the chronology of Indian air accidents:-
- 1988 – October 19: Indian Airlines flight from Mumbai crashes in heavy fog at Ahmedabad, killing 124 out of 129 passengers.
- 1990 – February 14: Flight from Mumbai crashes while landing at Bangalore airport, killing 92 out of 146 passengers.
- 1991 – August 16: Pilot error blamed after a flight crashes on descent at Imphal in remote areas of Manipur, killing 69 people.
- 1993 – April 26: Indian Airlines flight stopping en route from Delhi to Mumbai crashes on take-off at Aurangabad airport in Maharashtra, killing 55 of 118 passengers.
- 2000 – July 17: Alliance Air flight crashes at Patna airport, killing 60 passengers.
- 2009 – October: A Kingfisher plane was about to take off when an Air India flight from Nagpur landed on the same runway.
- 2010 – April 20: A Kingfisher flight in Mumbai aborted take-off to make sure that a GoAir flight, which had landed, was off the runway.
- 2010 – May 22: About 160 people were killed when an Air India Express flight overshot the runway at Mangalore airport and bursts into flames.
- 2010 May 27: A Jet Airways flight aborted landing because an Indigo flight was blocking the runway.
Who is to be blamed here? The drunken pilots, outdated aircrafts, old airports, or the incumbent ground staff?
Tipsy pilots
There have been several reports of pilots who were caught, reeking of alcohol. Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel said in Rajya Sabha that “39 cases have been reported to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) from January 2009 to December 2009, where pilots or co-pilots were found to have consumed alcohol during pre-flight breath-analyzer test.”
In 2009, only eight of the 42 pilots who were caught in a tipsy state while reporting to duty last year were terminated from service, while the rest were either grounded or suspended for brief periods. Delhi accounted for half the cases of drunkenness among pilots detected last year; 21 cases were detected at New Delhi airport. Another 11 were found under the influence of alcohol at Mumbai airport.
The data provided in reply to an RTI application by Abhishek Shukla says 28 of them are still flying. And the DGCA refuses to give details of action taken against these pilots.
So how can we think we are in safe hands?
Flying Coffins
Despite various fleet upgrade programmes, several old aircrafts are still flying in Indian skies – some well over 20 years old.
When an Indian Airlines Boeing crashed at Patna on 17th July 2000, there was a huge uproar demanding immediate grounding of the ‘Flying Coffins’ – as the ageing B737s were described by the pilots, who were wary of using an aircraft that was over 20 years old.
Ultimately, the probe into the crash identified ‘pilot error’ as the primary cause behind the crash. But that does not make the old and outdated aircrafts any less dangerous for civilians to travel in.
Old airports
Lack of funds has hampered the modernisation of airports around the country. Many pilots have also complained about old airports and the infrastructure saying, “We have been risking our life on a daily basis by landing and taking off from airports like Leh and Ladakh.”
In the recent Mangalore crash, the airport infrastructure was also touted as one of the major factors behind the crash. Our Government needs to take extra care of airports as better infrastructure will reduce chances of mishaps.
Ground staff
In the past we seen many air crashes that happened due to miscommunication between the pilot and the ground staff.
For instance, in the 1996 crash of a Saudi jumbo jet over Delhi, a judicial inquiry concluded that Indian air traffic controllers lacked sufficient training in modern handling procedures, making it difficult to cope with the sharp rise in traffic. Even modern airports like Delhi were still using outdated airport surveillance radar equipment.
Since then, new air traffic control systems have been put in place at India’s two major international airports at Mumbai and Delhi.
And not to speak of mid-air near-misses, recently a mid-air collision was averted on 5 June, 2010 afternoon, when a Jet Airways and an Air India plane came on the same flight path over Tamil Nadu. The planes, carrying nearly 250 passengers and crew, came close to a mid-air collision near the Tiruchirapalli air space. But somehow the crash was averted because of the pilots’ intelligence.
After every accident, a probe is set up into the incident that takes forever to solve. And it’s usually reactive, never preempted or proactive.
How long before action is taken to avert further air mishaps such as these?
Source:http://in.yfittopostblog.com
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