AVIATION SAFETY

There is increasing concern over aviation safety in India with many cases of near collision between passenger aircraft being reported recently. Recently, a collision between two aircraft was averted over the Hyderabad airport. A week before that an aircraft which was landing and another which was taking off, came close to collision in Guwahati. There have been other incidents of ‘near misses’ and narrow escapes at other airports in the recent past. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has said that more incidents were reported till now this year than all of last year. The figures show that there have been problems with air safety requirements and enforcement of norms. Luckily, no serious accident has taken place, but the near miss incidents could have turned into accidents and therefore they call for urgent action. Inadequate infrastructure and facilities, failure to upgrade equipment, poor maintenance and shortage of trained personnel at the air traffic control (ATC) have been cited as the main reasons for the increase in air safety problems. The DGCA has found that more than half of the potential collisions could be traced to lapses at the ATC. The shortage of air traffic controllers is very serious. There is a shortage of about 1,000 controllers and lapses are likely when the staff are overburdened. - more than 35 per cent of the Indian airspace is earmarked for defence use and hence restricted for civil flights. In such a scenario, many navigational routes are not aligned along the shortest flight passage between airports and require commercial flights to take circuitous route that require additional fuel and time. Government officials say the implementation of FUA will also help bring down carbon emissions by cutting down on fuel use. The first Airspace Management Cell (AMC), which will coordinate allocation of restricted airspace between civil and military aviation authorities, is likely to become operational by December this year at Delhi Air Traffic Control. The AMC would comprise officers from the Indian Air Force, the Indian Navy, airline representatives, airport operator and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. The first unit at Delhi will work on trial basis for a few months and depending on the results, similar units will be set up in Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata.