Not so Safe Flights

Not so safe flights

Sanat Kaul
 2010-01-19
Aviation has come a long way over the last 60 years. Once considered the most dangerous way to travel, it is now the safest mode of transportation, safer than road, rail or shipping. How did aviation go from being the most dangerous to being the safest in just 60 years? The answer is constant improvements in technology and the concept of ‘failsafe’, which provides multiple backups, theoretically eliminating the possibility of a technical glitch or breakdown. In fact, most accidents today are due to human error, not technological failure. In modern times, the failure of an Instrument Landing System (ILS) or a breakdown in radar systems are virtually unheard of.

However, recent incidents in Delhi have raised questions about the state of our aviation equipment. The media reported the January 9 failure of the ILS and the January 14 radar failure with great concern. Security had been our principal preoccupation ever since the IC184 hijacking in late 1999, but now safety is replacing it.

The recent ILS failure was caused by a problem with the Runway Visual Range (RVR) system, which provides visibility levels to pilots from three locations on the runway. On January 9, the RVR was not functioning from the last location on the runway, meaning that under low-visibility conditions pilots were unable to land using the ILS. It was later discovered that the wire connecting the last instrument had been cut off during work on the runway. Delhiites should be familiar with such scenarios as underground cables are frequently cut off due to roadwork. But we cannot treat our airports in the same callous way in which the PWD treats the capital’s roads.

However, the most serious concern in the RVR failure is that the failsafe mechanism did not work. Normally, the RVR’s wireless mode should have functioned in lieu of the wire that had got cut off. The blame game now starts to find out who is responsible—the Airports Authority of India who maintains it, the Met department that maintains the RVR system or the airport operator that maintains the runway.

Five days later, on January 14, there was another technological failure—a radar malfunction. The radar software upgrade malfunctioned while uploading and switched off. There was no backup for at least 45 minutes. Autocrat II, the existing software of the surveillance radar, malfunctioned and its display unit went blank at 5.44 pm. As a result, the ATC could not monitor the locations of the aircraft in flight. The backup also failed. Luckily, the new software, Autocrat III, was also running and was used. But since this software was not fed with the data, it ran as the primary radar and therefore could not identify individual aircraft, which appeared only as blips on the screen.
Both instances are rare in modern aviation. The issue is not only technical malfunction of the main systems, but also the reliability of the backups that failed. While the causes of these two particular failures will eventually be determined, the greater issue is the maintenance and reliability of all our aviation equipment and by extension the safety of passengers and flight crews. How is it that the backups also failed? Is it because they were already down and had not been repaired and were therefore unable to function at the critical time? How often is the safety equipment tested? Is there an independent agency that conducts safety audits to ensure our equipment is in top working condition? What are the best practices around the world? These questions need answers. Aviation system failures can have a deadly cost.

The author is chairman of the International Foundation for Aviation and Development (India chapter). He was formerly India’s representative to ICAO