Why did Mangalore Airplane crash happen in the first place?
According to the reports of the Airport Traffic Control (ATC) and witnesses, the perfectly functioning airplane flight IX-892 overshot the runway, crashed into the boundary wall, burst into flames and went down the valley.Two things come to light, criminal negligence on the part of airport authorities and a probable Air India scam, as if the beleaguered name that the airlines has earned is not enough.
1. Improper construction of the runway: ICAO norms prescribes standards for the minimum area for a stop way and/or a clear way if an aircraft undershoots or over-runs the runway. For instance, if an aircraft has initiated take off, and due to technical snag requires emergency stop, the standard prescribes the minimum area to be kept free to enable such a stop. In the case of Mangalore airport runway, the distance is just around 2400 meters in length, compared to other airports; even if the area left is used properly what is left is just 300 meters at the end of the runway, far below the required distance for an emergency stopway.
The length of the runway and the improper construction itself puts the credibility of Mangalore Airport as an international airport in question.The runway is tough to land as the natural conditions are definitely hostile with extreme edges on the sides of the hill. Besides the runway is not even, and the height ranges from 90 meters to 80 meters from eastern to western area.
There are reports that this runway was constructed by displacing laborers who were living here. There was a better piece of land that could have served as runway but since that land belonged to affluent people, for the sake of commercial interests, it was compromised. This precarious piece of land whose future as an airport runway was dicey, was made as runway on pressure from politicians, and business, real estate and hotel lobbies. In other words, the Mangalore airplane crash was nothing but a ticking time bomb.
Leo F Saldanha, coordinator of Environment Support Group (ESG) says that he had opposed to the construction of the runway in such hazardous conditions and had even a couple of public interest litigations (PILs) in the High Court and the Supreme Court challenging the construction in the late 90s . The PIL (Arthur Pereira and others vs Union of India and others., WP No. 37681/1997) stated that the airport did not conform to the minimum stands to safeguard the pane during emergency situations, particularly during landing and takeoff and that the airport also did not have emergency approach roads on all sides as needed. The Mangalore airplane crash was the perfect analogy to the PIL claim when the emergency rescue teams could not reach the access site due to the difficult terrain even after one hour after the accident took place. Several precious lives were lost due to this delay.
“No one in authority cared to listen to our fervent pleas. This even when we demonstrated through a variety of representations that the site chosen for expansion at Bajpe was surrounded by deep valleys on three sides of the runway and did not provide for emergency landing areas as required,” Saldhana said. The second runway construction began in 2004 and was commissioned in May 2006. No techno-economic assessment, feasibility study, or even a comprehensive environment impact assessment was ever done for the second runway. The the runway was built in total violation of applicable laws, standards and direction of the Supreme Court, alleges Leo Saldanha, coordinator of the ESG.
2. Former Air India chief involved in recruiting expat pilots: Air India’s executive director Jitendra Bhargava confessed on TV that there is a former Air India chairman who is recruiting expat or foreign pilots for a huge sum of money. Nice way to make money but shouldn’t one spare a though to lots of Indian pilots who are without jobs? Though the experience and ability of foreign pilots may not be questioned, having a Russian or Polish pilot can really create confusions due to linguistic problems during an emergency scenario like this.
With a sad case of probable criminal negligence in front of us, we should make sure that the Union Government form an impartial Commission of Inquiry to find out the reasons for the crash, the improper construction of the runway, the lobbying scandal and the deployment of foreign pilots for a lucrative fee.
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