E-Paper
Flying into turbulence
Indian civil aviation is beset by crises while probe bodies function as moral arbiters, not enforcers
Imagine being on a morning flight, bleary-eyed after a night-out or more in Phuket — a favourite party destination for a certain kind of reveller — and hoping for a few hours of rest before returning right in the middle of the mundane. But the flight becomes your worst nightmare, suddenly dropping at least 300 feet, with turbulence initially being blamed for the incident. So far, there’s nothing out of the ordinary. Now, add to the mix a pilot allegedly high on marijuana and technical problems, and it’s the stuff of nightmares for even seasoned flyers. That’s the curious case of AI-2379.
The Indian aviation sector, especially Air India, has lurched from one crisis to another. As if price upsurges, undisciplined flight schedules, technical glitches, non-existent customer care, and one of the worst air crashes in history were not enough, air travellers now have to factor in intemperate pilots. Are passenger safety commandments observed only in violations? As the probe into the Ahmedabad crash (also an Air India flight) that claimed 260 lives continues after one year without even a draft report, speculation is rife about collusion and cover-ups. This lack of transparency from all stakeholders—government, investigator, aircraft manufacturer, airline—makes claims to conduct any enquiry with competence and fairness suspect. Whether the captain of the Phuket flight was indeed abusing narcotics or whether there is merit to the theory about mechanical trouble, therefore, is of secondary importance. Whatever version the airline chooses to put forth will always be contested. To the injured passengers (and crew) on the flight, these are but marginalia. What matters is only that a serious lapse on the part of the airline endangered the lives of 137 passengers and eight crew members aboard the Phuket-Delhi flight. The captain failing the dope test twice should be seen as a serious lack of safety mechanisms and not merely an individual’s personal and professional failing. What will it take for the industry (and Air India, whose presiding deity appears to be Murphy) to fasten its seatbelts and put inviolable processes in place? More importantly, why do probe agencies and regulators end up acting merely as moral arbiters, in most cases, and not enforcers? The current case of the high pilot may have become a meme-fest only because of a fortunate lack of fatalities, but it was a lucky shot that everything didn’t go up in smoke.
