Will such an accident happen
again?
The Rediff Special by Chindu Sreedharan
In the radar room of Delhi's
Indira Gandhi airport, senior air traffic controller V K
Datta is not present. Dutta is the ATC who, an year ago,
was on duty that evening, and, at some seconds past 6.40
pm, saw the two dots on his computer screen merging and
disappearing. Today, Dutta is not on duty. And unlike
that black Tuesday, there is no Saudia flight to take
off. Nor a Kazakh aircraft, with shoppers for Janpath,
coming in. The radar controller, a senior ATC, is alert,
yet relaxed. He is talking to the pilot of a Hans
helicopter on the ATC frequency, guiding him in. At 6.34
pm the chopper is safe on the tarmac. Four minutes later,
a Hyderabad-bound Indian Airlines flight takes off from
runway 28. At 6.48 pm, another IA, this one to Bombay, is
up and climbing safely. There are more flights scheduled
about 20 in the next hour to be guided in and out, but
the controller is finding it much more easier than Dutta
did last year. "Our work has become slightly easier,
thanks to the segregation of air corridors," ATC
officials say.
Following the 200-page report which the R C Lahoti
Committee, constituted specially to probe the matter,
submitted to Civil Aviation Minister Chand Mahal Ibrahim
(the report had found it was the Kazakh pilot who was
solely to blame for the incident), the air safety norms
have bettered. For one, the authorities have bifurcated
the two main air corridors Green 456 and A 466 making it
possible for aircraft to approach and leave Delhi through
different routes.
"Now, the modernisation of air traffic control
is in its last stages," claims Airport Authority of
India deputy director (operations) S K Sikka, "It
includes installing state-of-the-art flight data and
radar processing equipment, and automatic self breathing
system which would provide the pilot all the flight data
he needs. In another two months we hope to take over the
equipment from Raytheon (the US supplier)."
Besides, he adds, the directorate of civil aviation
is planning to make it mandatory for all planes flying
through the Indian airspace to have collision avoidance
system installed. "To begin, they would start with
making its compulsory for all aircraft which can seat
more than 30," Sikka says, "It is scheduled to
take effect from January 1, 1999." So, has air
safety improved remarkably after the Charkhi Dadri
mishap?
"No, it hasn't really," claims ATC Guild
general secretary Brijendra Shekhar, "The situation
has eased slightly, true, but, overall, the desired
changes which the court of inquiry wanted has not come
about." Indian Commercial Pilots Association general
secretary Captain Ajith Singh agrees. "There has
been a slight improvement, but not all that much,"
he says, "You can detect more alertness on the part
of all air officials now."
Besides the segregation of corridors, Shekhar says
the authorities has done pretty little. The modernisation
plan is still to be implemented, and in the air corridor
bifurcation, there are still loopholes to be plugged. For
instance, Shekhar points out, the segregation has taken
place only on the two major routes. "What about the
rest?" he asks, "There should be bifurcation on
all routes. Also, on the G 456 corridor, the
separation of the incoming and outgoing flights is not by
the desired 15 degrees the airspace in between is far
less than it should be." The Guild had put forward
15 recommendations to the DGCA. These included improving
crew resource management, modernisation of equipment,
facilitating direct contact between the pilot and the
controller (prohibiting the use of interpreters) and
route bifurcation. "Except for one, none of these
have been implemented," Shekhar says, "There is
a lot to be done."
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