. The state of major airports in India is nothing short of a scandal. Near miss collisions, congestion lasting over three quarters of an hour, fatal accidents on the tarmac and traffic jams at the approach is all in a day’s flight at India’s airports. The airports are disasters waiting to happen.
A while back the aircraft carrying Sonia Gandhi came too close for comfort with another commercial flight. If this can happen on VVIP flights the layman is surly a sitting - or rather flying duck.
At the heart of the problem is the gap between the growth in the air traffic in India the infrastructure that ought to go with it. Currently 19 million people fly the Indian skies every year and this is going up at a staggering five million people per year. Of this growth 46 per cent has come from non-metro airports, which while not getting much publicity, are similarly constrained by infrastructure concerns.
The air traffic control links in India is poor both in numbers on the ground and the technology that they work with. Experts believe that the best way to ensure the position of an aircraft approach and departure position is the secondary surveillance radar. Shockingly many airports, including bangalore, are not equipped with this technology, likewise many airlines are not spending money to train their pilots in category III landing systems that allow for fog landing thereby throwing schedules off gear.
The second major concern is the unsustainable model of budget airline. Contrary to impression food and beverage costs are a tiny fraction of operating expenses. For both the full fare and budget airlines it is the fuel, maintenance, parking and crew costs that make up the large percentage of expenses. Thus temptations to cut costs are high a routine maintenance missed could lead to a catastrophic crash.
The bad news is that the scene at the Indian airports is likely top get worse before it gets better. Sure privatization at Delhi and Mumbai will help. It will create better utilization of resources and more comfortable transit. However till the airport authorities of India and the ministry of civil aviation comes in line with the urgent need for upgrading airport infrastructure today’s air traveler will have to contend with the fear of flying.
A while back the aircraft carrying Sonia Gandhi came too close for comfort with another commercial flight. If this can happen on VVIP flights the layman is surly a sitting - or rather flying duck.
At the heart of the problem is the gap between the growth in the air traffic in India the infrastructure that ought to go with it. Currently 19 million people fly the Indian skies every year and this is going up at a staggering five million people per year. Of this growth 46 per cent has come from non-metro airports, which while not getting much publicity, are similarly constrained by infrastructure concerns.
The air traffic control links in India is poor both in numbers on the ground and the technology that they work with. Experts believe that the best way to ensure the position of an aircraft approach and departure position is the secondary surveillance radar. Shockingly many airports, including bangalore, are not equipped with this technology, likewise many airlines are not spending money to train their pilots in category III landing systems that allow for fog landing thereby throwing schedules off gear.
The second major concern is the unsustainable model of budget airline. Contrary to impression food and beverage costs are a tiny fraction of operating expenses. For both the full fare and budget airlines it is the fuel, maintenance, parking and crew costs that make up the large percentage of expenses. Thus temptations to cut costs are high a routine maintenance missed could lead to a catastrophic crash.
The bad news is that the scene at the Indian airports is likely top get worse before it gets better. Sure privatization at Delhi and Mumbai will help. It will create better utilization of resources and more comfortable transit. However till the airport authorities of India and the ministry of civil aviation comes in line with the urgent need for upgrading airport infrastructure today’s air traveler will have to contend with the fear of flying.
No comments:
Post a Comment