Air crash sparks safety fear in India<\/p>\n
By Nelson Graves<\/p>\n
NEW DELHI (Reuter): The world's deadliest mid-air collision
\nhas trained an unforgiving spotlight on flight safety in India,
\nwhere economic growth has spurred travel but also burdened
\noutdated security controls.<\/p>\n
A court of inquiry has been given three months to investigate
\nlast week's fiery collision between a Saudi jumbo jet and a
\nKazakh cargo plane in which 349 people died.<\/p>\n
But experts were quick to criticize the nation's air traffic
\ncontrol system even though initial evidence suggests the
\ncollision may have stemmed from a tragic pilot error.<\/p>\n
\"Behind the Times,\" said a headline in India Today magazine
\nover an article criticizing \"obsolete\" air traffic control
\nequipment at New Delhi's international airport.<\/p>\n
Citing a report by the International Air Passengers
\nAssociation, the Times of India said the nation has one of the
\nworst safety records in the world.<\/p>\n
\"We are observing international standards of air safety,\"
\nCivil Aviation Minister C.M. Ibrahim said.<\/p>\n
But the Indian Commercial Pilots' Association said existing
\nnavigation and communication systems were not yet up to global
\nstandards and unable to cope with increased traffic.<\/p>\n
\"Some things need doing irrespective of who is to blame,\" S.S.
\nSidhu, former secretary-general of the International Civil
\nAviation Organization, told Reuters.<\/p>\n
Propelled by increased business and tourism following free-
\nmarket reforms started in 1991, more and more passengers are
\nlanding and taking off at Indian airports.<\/p>\n
Sidhu said the number of domestic passengers is increasing by
\nbetween 11 and 12 percent a year, while the number of
\ninternational travelers is growing by 7 percent. That has badly
\ntaxed the airport infrastructure, he said.<\/p>\n
A multi-million-dollar plan to modernize radar and
\ncommunications systems at major airports has fallen well behind
\nschedule, authorities said.<\/p>\n
Due to be operational six months ago, a state-of-the-art air
\ntraffic control system built by Raytheon Co of the United States
\nhas been held up by technical glitches.<\/p>\n
Last month the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA),
\nconsultants to the Indian government on the project, refused to
\ncertify the $92 million Raytheon system, which is also being
\ninstalled in Bombay, Indian and U.S. officials said.<\/p>\n
The system includes a Secondary Surveillance Radar (SSR) which
\nallows air traffic controllers to establish the altitude of a
\nplane as well as its direction and distance.<\/p>\n
Such a three-dimensional image could have given controllers in
\nDelhi the information they needed to warn the Saudi and Kazakh
\nplanes that they were headed towards disaster. Officials said the
\nsystem was now expected to be on line in early 1997.<\/p>\n
But Sidhu said other steps were urgently needed. He cited the
\nneed for a new air traffic control tower in Delhi, construction
\nof high-speed parallel taxi ways to ease runway traffic and a
\ncomputerized flight data processing system.<\/p>\n
He said the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation needed \"more
\nteeth\" to discipline erring pilots, and the nation needed a
\ntransport safety board to promote safety awareness.<\/p>\n
Over the longer term, Delhi needs to double its annual
\ncapacity to six million travelers from three million, he said.
\n\"My message is, 'Please expedite it. Do it as if it was
\nyesterday. Go all out,'\" he said.<\/p>\n
Ten senior pilots on a safety panel have recommended two
\nseparate air lanes for climbing and descending aircraft. Delhi
\ncurrently has only one corridor for all aircraft.<\/p>\n
A.K. Bhardwaj, assistant general secretary of the Air Traffic
\nControllers' Guild, told Reuters that Delhi's Very High Frequency
\ncommunications system was not dependable. \"It frequently fails.
\nAt times we lose contact with planes,\" he said.<\/p>\n
Some foreign pilots' language skills in English -- the
\nvernacular of international aviation -- were poor, he said.<\/p>\n
\"Every day we face difficulties with CIS (Commonwealth of
\nIndependent States) countries,\" he said.<\/p>\n
\"The controller has to repeat the same instruction three,
\nfour, five, six times. We are getting a lot of problems,\" he
\nsaid, adding that the same was true to some extent with Japanese
\nand Korean pilots.<\/p>",
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