Another high-profile personality, in this case Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Dorjee Khandu, is killed in a helicopter crash. While this may be old news by this morning, alarmingly, concerns about helicopter travel safety in the country aren?t news either.
If in 2005, the DC Kaushik Committee report on helicopter operations in the country strongly highlighted the inadequacy of flight inspectors (only one for almost 150 choppers then), even today civil aviation director general EK Bharat Bhushan admits the helicopter segment has ?historically? been the weaker part of the sector (there have been 60 civil chopper crashes in the country in the past two decades).
Interestingly, things haven?t improved much since 2005, with the country having only four flight safety inspectors for an estimated fleet of 270 civil choppers in the country and 130 non-scheduled flight operators.
Worse, these four are ?part-time? inspectors who divide their time between inspection and flying duties as chopper pilots themselves.
How shoddy the framework is can be gauged by the fact that of these four, three are pilots with PSU Pawan Hans Helicopters Ltd (PHHL), and have been appointed by PHHL itself. The fourth is a pilot with a private operator. Clearly, aviation expert captain Hanfee is not wrong when he calls for an ?adequate number of neutral, full-time inspectors.? And though PHHL may be feeling the heat with two crashes in the past month in the same region (the Arunachal CM?s chopper and the crash on April 19 in Tawang that killed 17 persons), experts feel the buck doesn?t stop with PHHL and the frequent accidents are a result of multi-agency failure and improper implementation of flight safety policy. While PHHL?s CMD RK Tyagi did not respond directly to FE on the issue, PHHL responded with a statement issued by deputy GM (engineering) Sanjeev Razdan. It read: ?Pawan Hans is fully committed to safety that is the topmost priority in our flying. It is on record that we do not fly our helicopters with a defect until they are fully rectified and we are fully satisfied about its airworthiness. Being a PSU, we give priority to the safety of our passengers, customers and helicopters first rather than commercial interest. Our senior officers carry out regular surveillance and monitor closely the operation so that safety is not compromised.? However, aviation safety consultant captain A Ranganathan cautions that PHHL needs an independent, transparent audit and the entire sector needs an independent flight safety board urgently. ?With former DGCA officials on the PHHL board and safety inspectors also nominated by PHHL, to what extent can we trust their internal audits?? he questions. The Rotary Wing Society of India (RWSI), a non-profit body promoting the helicopter industry, claims it?s in talks with authorities to have flight tracking systems and better communication technology, but, as a highly-placed industry source told FE, the Airports Authority of India declared in the last meeting of the Civil Aviation Safety Advisory Council in July last year that it had no funds to spare. However, Bharat Bhushan of DGCA promises things are being brought back on track. ?We do have a shortage of manpower that we looking to correct. We have also formed a special group on helicopters that includes industry experts. You will see definite improvement in the days to come,? he says.