Chadta Suraj Dheere Dheere Dhalta Hai Dhal Jaayega

लोग हमेशा चदते सूरज को सलाम करते हैं और ढलते सूरज से सब दूर रहते हैं, क्यूंकि चदता सूरज रौशनी लाता है और ढलता सूरज अँधेरा. अँधेरे में तो साया भी सात नहीं देता है लोगों से क्या उम्मीद करें

These were the profound words that were told to me many years ago by someone I hold in high regard. The very worldly wise paan-wala who has rarely said things which are untrue. His company for the last 20+ years has kept my ears close to the ground and head firmly on my shoulders. 

Flashback four years.

If you recall air travel many years ago, as passengers you had two terminals to choose from depending on which airline you flew. More often than not, every city had a terminal dedicated to "Indian Airlines" and the other terminal for "Private Airlines". Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore all had separate terminals for the erstwhile Indian Airlines, which was uncrowded, had far better facilities and usually had the friendly Indian Airlines staff ever willing to ensure that you caught your flight even if you were a few minutes late. This like I said was many moons ago. A sense of pride was instilled in employees of "Air India + Indian Airlines + Alliance Air" (now known as NACIL or Nonsense Accentuated Company of Incompetent Legislature) in the fact that we stood out, we had an identity, we had our own fr***in terminal. Eat that you private airline fliers, we at Indian Airlines care about our passengers enough to give them the best. The facilities were envied by every other airline, then one day Jet Airways took the bold step and said they would work towards their own terminal in Bombay. But then every flier in those days on Indian Airlines had the luxury of not being crowded into serpentine check-in lines followed by longer security lines and then even longer boarding lines. Especially the early morning crowd out of Delhi, doing a 5:50 departure to Leh or the Army charters were fun.

Then one day despatch was abuzz with rumours that BeerJet had forayed into the airline business and they had sent gifts the size of a Ukulele case to almost everyone of any relevance in Indian Airlines, Airports Authority of India, ATC services, et-al. A couple of days later the news doing the rounds was that the Alliance Air counters at the Delhi & Mumbai airports were being wound up and merged into the Indian Airlines counters (after all we were one company). Well that seemed like the good part of the news. And then the bombshell was dropped, the area was being cleared to make way for Check-In counters for BeerJet. Well the bearded man sure knew how to get his way around things for one. And then slowly we figured out that he signed up Indian Airlines ground services as well, so guess what, while we were waiting for a tug, we'd see one zip right across our faces (remember Alliance Air used to be at the far end of the Delhi tarmac) to the other end to push out a waiting BeerJet 320 after which they would come to get us. It was not surprising when ATC wouldn't give you lower levels 200miles out and then ask you to do an orbit and then you figure out that while you did that orbit an aircraft at a lower level went ahead of you, and more often than not it was a BeerJet. Then you had these pretty-young-things who would hog the mic at airports making "guest" announcements repeatedly in a well orchestrated script. Well, maybe I read too much into situations and circumstances, but let's speculate things even if it is circumstantial. It has never been easy making the government machinery move, however when BeerJet came about things did happen albeit quickly for them. I'm not sure if it was intent or content that made things happen for them, but sharing OUR terminal, OUR ground equipment, OUR aero-bridges, OUR staff used to get me infuriated. At that time it was clear that our obituary had been written and we were merely collecting for a coffin for the erstwhile "Indian Airlines + Alliance Air" combination which had been a revenue generator.

Flash forward four years.

The bearded man is in trouble, the king of good times has fallen on bad ones. Beer is finally a four letter word. No one gives a rats ass of what happens to them. The aviation industry's parasites have shown that they can gnaw away at an airline finish it, feed on its carcass and move on to the next. But more often than not it is the airline that courts its own trouble. Reality, the erstwhile friends of BeerJet have deserted them.

The sun my friends has set. 

With every setting sun in the west, rises a new one in the east. 


The new sun now is IndiJOe Airlines, with their snazzy adverts (remember the czech+baniya model crooning to something in my window, earth below)  and similar posturing as was BeerJet four years ago. You see them do the same thing, except this time they're out for the gullet. Get slots, Get Pilots, Get terminal space, Get Mic space, Get get get get get.... 


Given sufficient time, the new found friends of IndiJOe will start gnawing at them shortly and will eventually result in their demise, when another sun will rise in the east. Why are they blind? Can't they see what has happened to the various others who courted the devil and danced with him, who today are the devil's dessert? In this day and age, my heart aches just a little bit every time I look at the far side of Delhi or Bombay terminals and remember how we used to have this colorful parade of Orange tails in unison almost as if harmony flowed through the space. A small sense of pride remains that I was a part of this history. You can go ahead and rename all the taxiways and parking bays all you want, but Old Lufthansa Hangar will remain the landmark for many generations to come.


And to IndiJOe all I have to say is "आज जवानी पर इतराने वाले कल पछतायेगा, चदता सूरज धीरे धीरे ढलता है ढल जाएगा"

 

A Flight Too Far

Watching the news and reading the papers these days seems to be fraught with news of how 100+ people have miraculous escapes. The primary driver of 40"+ LCD-TV Sales, Arnab Goswami - Times Now even had a 1 hour show dedicated to such an escape. How is he driving the adoption of 40"+ LCD/LED TVs is by putting 12 people together in the same screen which makes it impossible to view properly in a normal 32" TV and is a sure blinder if you have the tiny 14" portable color tv that run on CRTs.

Coming back to the point of miraculous escapes, it is incredible the level of fear that is being induced into people who have little or no idea about how flying works or worse are scared of flying. It is almost systematic fear being induced to help didi overcome her failure of being the party that takes care of the Railways by making it sound like a safer option, even if the scores there are by far the worst ever. As I write the blog, I'm tempted to quote from a newspaper that yesterday a train rammed into... wait for it..... an earth cutting machine on an unmanned level crossing that killed 3 people, yet, it finds no mention in most places. Is this a battle between a now near bankrupt consortia of Air India, Kingfisher, IndiGo & Jet Airways vs. DiDiS Ministry? Well if it is, it sure as hell is a losing battle, for both. 

Let us look at something that came in the papers a few days ago, a couple of politicians running election runs hire a private plane (no I cannot call it a Jet, cos it was a prop) and are landing into Lucknow, the pilot notices that a Saudi Arabian Airbus 330 is backtracking on the runway and won't be able to complete his take-off roll in time, and is fairly well out and way above MDH (Minimum Decision Height) and says to himself "ummmm.... welll, I could land on top of that Saudi Arabian aircraft, but the mess I'm gonna make will result in a lot of people being dead, so let me not do that", and initiates a normal procedure called missed approach. That helps avoid the unwary contact of two planes in motion, the result of which is usually called a crash. Coming back, the pilot makes a decision well in time, well in advance and well planned and does what is routine. But what he doesn't know is that he is carrying polticos who are vying for coming to power in what has now been the metaphorical Achilles heel state for them. So guess what, pull out the two most common cards anyone would, religion and accusations. So out come the guys from the airport and make a statement that somehow.... in a deal that got struck in some weird "Inception" like parallel universe... the state government did not want that aircraft to land and possibly even wanted them to make the unwary contact mentioned earlier to eliminate them from the race. Well, they are what they are, and show me someone who trusts a politician and I'll get you all the gold in the world, the media picks this up and puts out a story about how 200+ lives and some "important" politicians could've died. And for someone who's been flying for a while now, I'm thinking, "hmmmm.... go on, keep talking... how interesting".

Again, a couple of days ago an Air India Express Boeing 737 rejected take-off after discovering that a just landed SIA Cargo 747 had turned into E4 to exit but stopped short of the threshold making his tail jut out onto the runway. No one was hurt, maybe a little rattled, but that is what happens when you brake suddenly to avoid an obstacle while driving a car as well. So what, my friend, is the big deal? Something big enough for Mr-Scream-A-Lot Arnab to warrant 1 hour of air time to cover this 'incident'.

Now let's see how this is portrayed visually. The channel puts up a horribly mocked up animation of the incident. The kind of animation we saw in the 1980's mega-serial Ramayana. Yeah, you have sparks flying, and sound effects that could have won the Emmy's .... in 1960. Now the whole animation is done in a way to make sure that the visual impact is nowhere close to what could have happened. In absolute terms, they are trying to make you imagine things. To give you an analogy, every time a news channel is covering Kashmir, it is customary to show the stone pelting, PLO look-alike protestors. Having landed into Srinagar quite a few times it can be safely said that you're as safe in Srinagar as you are in Bombay, Delhi or Calcutta. There are pockets of unrest but most of it is normal.

Try speaking against it, and you are gagging the free press, the fourth estate, the infallible.

In a country fascinated by witch-hunts and trial by media we seem to be willing subjects to this misinformation being spread around.

Here is the real deal, pilots spend hours on the simulators preparing for exactly such situations. Engine failures, loss of hydraulics, aborting take-off rolls at high speeds, going around, yada yada yada. Almost everything that you can think of is practiced relentlessly in the simulators. In fact flying is more about preparing for anything except the aircraft taking off. Now that is the reason they don't allow others into the flight deck. Excerpt of a take-off briefing goes something like, "..... below 80kts you will do nothing, contact the tower, cancel all alarms..." any normal person hearing this will be thinking, "why are they talking about this? is there something wrong?" but being prepared is the name of the game. In an emergency, you don't have time for,"Aji sunte ho, tanki mein paani bhar gaya hai, pump band kar do".

Remember flying is safer than it ever was, Right now you need to drink a lot of beer and fly a lot to make sure that the aviation industry remains alive and kicking. The industry needs you to fly, more than ever before. You need to take that flight to make sure that we tide over this bad phase. Remember, the aviation industry survives on the need to travel. All that stuff about tele-presence, give it a break, there is nothing like meeting someone in flesh n blood (especially if you want to draw some). Imagine the amount of partying you can do in a different city when you're out on work. Imagine the lovely free breakfast buffet you get when you're in the company paid hotel. Fly y'all fly. Unless you fly, we don't get paid.The panic the news channels are spreading is irrelevant, I stake my job on it.