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| Flight security, infrastructure must | | |
Jammu and Kashmir will make its first direct global contact on Valentine Day ie: February 14 when a flight takes off from Srinagar for Dubai. This certainly is an hour of celebration. With this direct international flight from Srinagar and proposals from various airliners, significantly Kingfisher, to ply more flights in Jammu and Kashmir, there is an urgent need of enhancing the supporting infrastructure and security in the air. This becomes more important in the backdrop on recent accidents that were averted narrowly in many parts of the country. The sign of danger seems to be haunting air travel in India. Every other day, there are reports of accidents that were narrowly averted. The most recent has been a near collision between a helicopter and an aircraft on the runway of Mumbai airport. The other one is the frightening story of two aircraft coming perilously close to each other high up in the air. Such cases are becoming too frequent to be treated as isolated incidents. Obviously, all is not well with air traffic control in India. This has made open skies and airport runways dangerous places. It is worth noting that in most of these incidents lives of passengers have been saved because of the alertness and quick thinking of the pilots. The fault appears to lie not with those who actually fly the aircraft, but with those who guide their movements through machines and radars. The point is important since safe air travel is entirely dependent on the perfect co-ordination between pilots and air traffic control. This is one of those areas where anything below perfect is a threat to lives, and where the saying, “to err is human”, is not acceptable as an excuse. There is too much at stake when a human being makes an error that affects air passengers. One reason for the frequency of such incidents may well be the rise in the volume of air traffic in India. It is evident that the systems that support air traffic have not grown at the same pace. It is possible that men and women sitting at air traffic control are overworked and errors are creeping in because of the fatigue factor. This can be easily remedied. There should be an immediate realization that air safety is not a zone where the logic of scarce monetary resources should be made to apply. The lives of human beings cannot be measured in rupees. The other area that needs review is the maintenance of standards. Are international norms of safety and global best practices being maintained across the country? If the findings are in the negative, then steps should be taken to raise the standards of men and machines. What is not clear is what kind of actions are being taken against personnel who are found guilty of negligence and carelessness. Here the most stringent penalties should apply. Air traffic control demands different levels of responsibilities, and therefore different levels of accountability and, if necessary, different levels of compensation. Only the best achieve perfection day after day.
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