On Tuesday, November 3, 2009, when the pilot of a New Delhi-Mumbai GoAir flight G8 105, with more than 154 passengers on board was given the permission to land by the Air Traffic Control (ATC), he headed for the eastern end of the runway, risking the lives of 60 workers at the runway repair site.
On Tuesday, November 10, a Kingfisher flight skidded off the runway into a grassy patch. According to the ATC, instead of touching down at the beginning of the runway, the Kingfisher pilot overshot by 500m, thus getting only 1,200m of the useable stretch of the runway to stall the plane.
While the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) claims to have issued an instruction to all airlines not to land on a wet runway, ATC officials said they had received no such instruction.
This has led to a blame-game exercise between the DGCA, Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL) and the ATC. The lack of clarity and coordination between the authorities has after all put the lives of passengers, flight crew and ground staff at Mumbai airport at risk.
This spells out just one cold, hard truth - that airlines and passengers have to be prepared for any eventuality at Mumbai airport, especially on Tuesdays, when runway repair operations are on.
Are the DGCA, MIAL and ATC strangling passengers with their bureaucratic red tape? What solutions are needed to be put in place so that airline safety norms are maintained at optimum levels?
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