Sunday 23 May, 2010

Mangalore Flight Crash - run(a)way

Tamil version is here. This is for my non-Tamil friends.

Flights crash every now and then. When it happened in Poland, when it happened Libya, it was a news to me. I read it, felt bad for the people who died or injured, even before I would try to dig more details of the victims, another news in Google News will capture my eyes, may be that HTML5 which Apple/Google tries to promote or that "Ravanan" movie that is gonna get released next month. The accidents like this don't affect me as much as they did few years back. They are becoming part of daily news that I read and i am developing a resistance to these news. They don't break my heart or make me feel bad for the entire day. Is it good or bad? I don't know. It might sound like inhuman to accept this feeling in public. But to whom am I hiding this? why should I artificially sound concerned, if I am really not? I don't know. May be a topic of discussion for another day.

First my prayers for the victims and condolences to the family members who lost their dear ones. Life is not replaceable. I pray to god to give them strength to overcome this.

But this particular crash brought my concerns back. With so many of my friends using this Airport so frequently that, the thought of 'probably' losing one of them strikes me so hard.I am forced to learn more about this. Why would this happen? Is it because of the uniqueness of the TableTop runway or is it just a human error? Because the pilot is a contractor instead of AI employee? Will we ever know the truth here? I can blame it on that god, when something like an earthquake/Tsunami happens. But whom will I blame here? Yes, I hear you. Statistically Air travel is still safer than all other modes of transportation. But that doesn't mean we lose our focus to correct the problems here.

Given below is the map of the Airport:



The horizontal runway is the older one and the one with 45 Degree inclination is the new one where the flight landed. It is at least 8000 Feet long and is enough for the flights in the caliber of Boeing 737-8HG, the one that is involved in crash. Pilot has landed the same flight in same runway 19 times and the co-pilot has done that 66 times. So the terrain is not new to them. Even with the 2000 feet overshot, he should have enough runway left to land the flight, may be he would have hit the sand dune at the end of the runway. (This dune is not big or wide like it is in other airports,
but it is there). But looks like he moved out of runway due to some reason. Most channels blamed the Pilot for the accident. But to me that is just to find the instant scapegoat for the accident. It is very sad that media who are supposed to play a constructive role, play this kind of cheap publicity stunts.

Anyway i just have couple of questions. Hopefully we will get answers for it...

1. People sitting in different areas of the flight have survived? If we had any better technology/survival mechanisms, was there a possibility to increase this number?

2. Was there any problem with this particular airplane? I never believe companies like Boeing, as they might sell not the best-in-class stuff to companies like AI which has very less accountability.

While the English channels where finding scapegoats, there was one good analysis in a Kannada Channel. It was simple enough for anyone to understand. Good job guys.

Links for that analysis:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ0xhPpMFz0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYBppKIGd2Y&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuP8apl9uR8&feature=related

You will understand most of it, even if you don't know Kannada.

Hopefully we will get the correct answers for all unanswered questions.

3 comments:

AkashSankar said...

தயவு செய்து Font color மாத்துங்க... சுத்தமா படிக்க முடியல...

செந்தில் நாதன் Senthil Nathan said...

மாற்றி விட்டேன்.

தடங்கலுக்கு வருந்துகிறேன். :-)

Karthik B S said...

Nice one