Grounded by incompetence

This year, everyone was prepared for the fog, or so it seemed.

Falling in line with the civil aviation ministry’s dictate that they have to be Category-III (or CAT-III) compliant — which means aircraft can operate even at visibility of as low as 50 metres — the airlines had invested in making their aircraft CAT-III compliant. They had trained their pilots to be CAT-III compliant. And the IGI airport, too, with its runway visual range (RVR) equipment, was seemingly CAT-III compliant.

And yet, it all fell apart, thanks to incompetence and lack of maintenance — two factors that were apparently not part of the CAT-III parameters. It was the failure of the RVR equipment on runway 29 of IGI that led to massive disruption flight schedules, leaving thousands of passengers stranded invarious airports across the country on Friday and Saturday.

The irony is that, not only is IGI fully equipped to operate at low visibility, of the 289 planes that airlines own, 206 were CAT-III complaint as on November 17, 2009.

So, why did it all go wrong and who is to be blamed for the chaos? PS Nair, CEO of Delhi International Airports Ltd (DIAL), says the RVR equipment failed due to cable damage, and this was an unfortunate occurrence for which nobody can be held responsible. “If a machine fails, it is no one’s fault. We have wireless backup for the RVR but that was also misrepresenting the signals. Our engineers worked round the clock to repair the damaged cable of the RVR,” he said.

But not everyone agrees with him. A senior executive of the state-owned Air India wondered why the airport did not have a backup for the RVR equipment. “All the airlines have fallen in line by complying with the civil aviation ministry’s dictate of training their pilots for low visibility conditions. But what is the government doing about the infrastructure? Why was there no backup for RVR equipment?” he asked.

Another pilot with a private carrier, who did not want to be named, said the failure of RVR equipment was due to incompetent maintenance. “It could have failed because of improper maintenance or insufficient power supply. If it is the latter, the airport should have had backup power, while for maintenance, we can only blame the AAI (Airports Authority of India),” he said.

A Bangalore-based pilot from Jet Airways said, “Only one runway is CAT-III complaint. Even that (runway) is usable only up to 8,500 feet when it is 14,000 feet long. This is because of its faulty construction. Why don’t they (airports) address this? Airlines spend so much money on aircraft and pilots for them to become CAT-III complaint, the least they can expect is upgrade of the airport infrastructure accordingly,” said the pilot.

Meanwhile, a statement issued by the directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) on Saturday said the RVR equipment on runway 29 was affected because of damage to cables, and RVR equipment for runway 11 became unserviceable for over 12 hours.

“During the aforesaid period, 17 flights were diverted and 27 departures rescheduled,” said the note. The statement added that the standby system for making RVR equipment operational was being airlifted from Pune to make runway 10 operational within 24 hours. As per a Met department forecast, the foggy conditions are likely to prevail beyond the next 24 hours.