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30 Dec 2024 : The Hindu Editorial,

Editorial 1: Incidents on loop, but it’s escape for regulator, airlines

Context

That frequent and the same kind of serious aviation incidents keep recurring in India points to deficiencies in regulation and training standards.

 

Introduction

The recent incident, on December 5, 2024, involving an Air India Airbus A320 aircraft at Goa’s Mopa airport is another wake-up call for Indian aviation. The crew of the Hyderabad-bound aircraft had to reject takeoff after entering a parallel taxiway instead of the main runway. This is not the first time an event such as this has happened to airlines in India. This falls under the category of runway confusion.

  • The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the regulatory body that primarily deals with safety issues, as we have seen during the past 20 years, will blame the pilots and sweep the report under the carpet.
  • The blame, squarely, points to the regulator and the airlines. It has failed to learn from earlier events.
  • The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)’s Annex 13 makes it mandatory for a member-state to investigate accidents, serious incidents and also incidents and identify the cause and take corrective steps to prevent a recurrence.

 

Series of incidents: History of Runway Confusion Errors by Indian Carriers

  • 1993: A Jet Airways Boeing 737 inaugural flight to Coimbatore landed at the Sulur air base of the Indian Air Force instead of Peelamedu civil airport.
  • September 2002: A Jet Airways Boeing 737 landed on the taxi track in Dabolim airport in Goa.
  • June 2007: A Spicejet Boeing 737 landed on the wrong runway at Delhi.
  • December 2008: A Spicejet Boeing 737 landed on a wrong runway at Kolkata.
  • March 2009: A Jetlite CRJ landed on a wrong runway at Kolkata.
  • September 2018: An Air India Airbus A320 on the Delhi-Thiruvananthapuram-Male sector landed on a wrong (under construction) runway in the Maldives.
  • June 2018: A Jet Airways Boeing 737 had to abort takeoff while on a taxiway at Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.
  • January 2014: An Air India Boeing 787 almost landed at Melbourne’s Essenden airport before air traffic control directed the crew to Melbourne Tullamarine airport.
  • December 2020: A Spicejet Boeing 737 had a hard touchdown short of the runway threshold in Guwahati, Assam.

 

Lack of Accountability and Corrective Measures

  • Had the DGCA and the airlines concerned taken proactive and corrective steps, India would not have to cut a sorry figure in international aviation.
  • India is lucky that none of these events resulted in fatalities. The blame is apportioned to pilot error while the airlines and the regulator walk away without accountability.

 

Role of Civil Aviation Bodies

  • In June 2010, in the first meeting of the Civil Aviation Safety Advisory Council (CASAC), formed after the Mangaluru crash of an Air India Express flight (May 2010), this writer had highlighted some of the events, between 2002 and 2009, in a presentation before the Union Minister of Civil Aviation.
  • If such serious incidents are still taking place in 2024, the blame falls squarely on the Ministry of Civil Aviation, the DGCA, and the airlines for their failure to prevent a recurrence.

 

Singapore took corrective measures

  • Singapore Airlines Incident: On October 31, 2000, a Singapore Airlines flight in Taiwan was attempting to expedite its departure before the airport closed due to a typhoon.
    • The crew took off from a wrong runway, which had been partially closed.
    • The aircraft crashed into construction equipment, exploded in a fire, and several passengers died.
    • The incident occurred at night, in heavy rain, and with strong winds.
    • Singapore Airlines took corrective measures, and there has not been a serious incident since.
    • India could learn from Singapore's approach in ensuring safety and taking corrective actions to prevent similar incidents.

 

Repeated Accidents Involving Indian Airlines

  • History of runway overruns and incidents:: Airlines in India have faced repeated accidents involving high and fast approaches, resulting in runway overruns since 2005:
      • October 2005: An Air Sahara Boeing 737 went off the runway at Mumbai, causing serious damage to the aircraft.
      • March 2015: A Spicejet DH8-D sustained damage during a runway excursion on landing in Hubli.
      • July 2019: A Spicejet Boeing 737 overran the runway in Mumbai on landing, resulting in aircraft damage.
      • December 2016: A Jet Airways Boeing 737 went off the runway at Goa after a rejected takeoff.
  • Hull Losses and Fatalities:
    • A majority of these incidents resulted in hull losses and some, such as the Mangaluru and Kozhikode (2020) crashes, resulted in the loss of 179 lives.

 

Lack of Accountability and Corrective Measures

  • Pilot Blame vs. Systemic Failures: In all of these overrun accidents, pilots have been blamed, but there has been no accountability for:
      • The poor training and safety standards of airlines.
      • Non-compliance with ICAO standards on aerodrome infrastructure.
      • The failure of the DGCA and Airports Authority of India’s safety audits, which have covered up serious deficiencies.
  • Failure of the fight standards: The Flight Standards Directorate of the DGCA, responsible for overseeing safety standards, has failed miserably, as the same types of accidents continue to occur, and aircraft have been written off.

 

Pressure on crew

  • Flight and duty time limitations: India has one of the worst sets of regulations on flight and duty time limitations for flight crew.
    • Pilots and cabin attendants are often pressured to operate in violation of flight time limits, flight duty limits, and rest periods.
  • Pressure of "On-Time Performance" (OTP): A new source of pressure on flight deck crew is the hydra-headed monster called “on-time performance” (OTP).
    • Many of the errors can be attributed to the OTP pressure and failure of crew resource management in the cockpit.

 

Cases of Pressured Pilots and Lapses in Decision-Making

  • Kozhikode crash: In the Kozhikode crash, the captain was in a hurry to land because he was required to operate the next day’s flight.
    • The accident is a classic case of “press-on-it is”, where once the pilot gets fixed on the landing strip, no inputs are received from the other pilot.
  • Mangaluru accident: The same scenario happened in the Mangaluru accident, where repeated calls by the co-pilot to go around were ignored.

 

Training Deficiencies and Lack of Knowledge

  • Mopa, Goa incident: The incident in Mopa, Goa, demonstrates a lack of knowledge of runway markings by the pilots.
    • Runways, not taxi tracks, have specific markings, and pilots landing short also indicate a lack of knowledge of runway markings and non-compliance with stabilised approach criteria.
  • Training and safety deficiencies:
    • Airline training and safety departments should wake up and address these serious training deficiencies.

 

Conclusion

India has to move from the old adage,“If a pilot is alive, blame him. If he is dead, bury him”. The recent deferment of flight and duty time limits at the behest of airline managements is a serious safety issue. To add fuel to the fire is a High Court decision asking the DGCA to negotiate with the two sides to find a suitable solution. Safety and fatigue are not negotiable. This is another instance of the judiciary having no clue about aviation safety.

Editorial 2: Restoring constitutional order in Manipur

Context

A thorough assessment of the Supreme Court’s interventions in Manipur over the last 18 months and the incremental steps it can take to rebuild trust in the rule of law is at least merited.

 

Introduction

A thorough assessment of the Supreme Court’s interventions in Manipur over the last 18 months and the incremental steps it can take to rebuild trust in the rule of law is at least merited. In general, we can witness a gradual slide towards institutional dereliction, complacency, and apathy that is unbecoming of a Constitutional Court meant for all Indians. This is evident from the fact that, except for the last hearing on December 9, where it sought details of destroyed and encroached properties, the court did not hold any effective hearings or pass corresponding orders in 2024.

  • Limited hearings on petitions: Throughout this year, the main batch of petitions on Manipur was heard only six times.
    • In other words, the court functioned as if its writ jurisdiction had ceased to extend to Manipur, even as 2024 saw some of the bloodiest phases of violence and gruesome killing of innocent victims belonging to both warring ethnic communities.
  • Violence and bloodshed in Manipur: 2024 saw some of the bloodiest phases of violence and gruesome killing of innocent victims belonging to both warring ethnic communities.
  • Unprecedented events Post May 3, 2023: Adding to this are the continuation of various events that emerged on or after May 3, 2023, and are unprecedented in the life of our republic.
    • The list of illustrations is lengthy and extensive — the demographic and geographical separation of the State and its enforcement through a militarised buffer zone, the State’s complete surrender over the monopoly of violence and law and order to armed militant groups, and the administration of an illegal, hateful ethno-cultural oath to legislators by the Arambai Tenggol.

 

Supreme Court's Response to Specific Incidents

  • Suo Moto cognisance and episodic action: On some occasions, the Supreme Court did respond, especially when it took suo moto cognisance after a video depicting tribal women being sexually assaulted and paraded naked by a mob went viral on social media.
    • But its responses were episodic across several months in 2023, only to remain largely absent in 2024.
  • Ongoing legal proceedings: This is evident as magisterial courts in Assam, to whom the Supreme Court had given charge of pre-trial procedures, await its directions to take cognisance of the chargesheets filed and begin the trial.
    • For instance, the trial is yet to begin in the case of the sexual assault and naked parade of two tribal women, even though the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had filed chargesheets against six accused persons, including a juvenile, in October 2023.

 

Supreme Court's Orders and Follow-Up Actions

  • Formation of relief and rehabilitation committee: In an order dated August 7, 2023, the Supreme Court had directed the formation of a committee of three retired judges, led by Justice Gita Mittal, to look into all matters of relief and rehabilitation.
  • Establishment of Special Investigation Teams (SITs): The constitution of 42 Special Investigation Teams (SITs) in six groups based on the crimes, comprising CBI officers drawn from cadres/States and headed by a retired Director-General of Police.
    • By all accounts, the functioning of the former has been reduced to a mechanical, bureaucratic ritual of filing occasional reports.
  • SIT performance and delays in filing chargesheets: Several tribal student organisations have since also filed separate pleas before the Supreme Court for relocating displaced students to other universities and professional institutes.
    • Simultaneously, a report in The Hindu (December 18, 2024) stated that chargesheets for only 6% (192 cases) out of 3,023 registered cases have been filed by the SIT till November 20, 2024.
    • It remains unclear how much of the structure envisioned for the SITs by the Supreme Court is still intact, as publicly available information suggests that multiple IPS officers on deputation to the SITs from Haryana, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, and Delhi have either sought repatriation or have already been repatriated back to their home cadres.

 

Crucial measures

  • Failure of previous direction: These directions, initially viewed with a high degree of optimism, have overwhelmingly failed to instill any sense of justice among the people of Manipur or arrest their feelings of institutional neglect and the complete erosion of the rule of law.
  • Return of Supreme Court's attention to Manipur: Now that the Supreme Court appears to have turned its attention back to Manipur, it must undertake the following measures to provide the State with a much-needed healing touch.

 

Way Forward: Recommended Measures

  • Transfer of trials outside Manipur: Given the volatile situation in Manipur, inimical to a fair criminal justice system, the trials of cases investigated by the SITs should be transferred forthwith outside Manipur, and the appropriate trial courts should be allowed to take cognisance of chargesheets already filed.
  • Filling the Informational Vacuum: The SITs should be directed to fill the existing informational vacuum and provide timely updates to petitioners and the families of deceased victims about the progress of the investigations and trials.

 

Conclusion

Considering the enormity of multi-faceted issues arising from the conflict in Manipur that persist and are likely to continue due to the sharp governance deficit, a bipartisan High Powered Commission comprising eminent persons, including members from both conflicting communities, should be constituted. This commission, in turn, be directed to report its findings directly to a Special Bench of the Supreme Court, which should be given the task of exclusively hearing cases related to the ethnic violence in Manipur.