2 Oct,2010

In‘defence’ible arrogance
If anybody needed an example of exactly how highhanded the Navy can be, they have only to see what happened at Dabolim Airport on Thursday morning, when a Kingfisher Airlines Bangalore-Goa flight carrying 51 passengers circled the airport for 15 minutes begging for permission to land, and the Navy-controlled Air Traffic Control (ATC) at the airport denied it. The Kingfisher flight was forced to return to Bangalore.
The reason for the Navy’s extraordinary decision? Since Dabolim airport is also a defence airfield, the runway and airport are shut for civilian aircraft from 8.30am to 1pm on Monday to Friday. Fair enough; the Navy must have exclusive time for its operational preparedness. But when a flight has been delayed for reasons beyond its control – and the Dabolim ATC was well aware of this – is it any excuse to cause such a huge loss to the airline and so much inconvenience to passengers?
The Bangalore-Goa Kingfisher flight was scheduled to arrive at Dabolim airport at 7.45am, and take off for its return journey at 8.15am. But a heavy fog in Bangalore delayed it. The flight left the terminal at Bangalore around 7am, but it had to wait to take off for another 44 minutes owing to heavy traffic. By the time it arrived at Goa, it was 8.45am, 15 minutes after the scheduled cut-off time for civilian flights.
If there was no possibility of the flight landing owing to some top secret Navy operations, the ATC could have informed its Bangalore counterpart and stopped the flight from taking off. But it didn’t do this. It waited till the flight was circling above Dabolim airport, and then denied it permission to land.
And there were no top secret Navy operations on. Replying to media questions, Navy Public Relations Officer (PRO) Commander M C Joshi said that scheduled maintenance work on the runway and runway lighting “had already begun” when the Kingfisher pilot sought permission to land.
If that is the case, perhaps Cdr Joshi could explain how, around 15 minutes after the Kingfisher flight was forced to return to Bangalore, the Dabolim ATC permitted Air India flight IC 567 flight to take off from Dabolim airport to Chennai at about 9 am? Or did the so-called maintenance work on the runway and its lighting conclude within 15 minutes of the Kingfisher flight being refused permission to land…?
As a result of this inexplicable bout of muscle-flexing on the part of the Navy, 51 passengers from Bangalore, many of whom must have had very important work in Goa, reached their destination only at 5.30pm that day. Not just that, 58 passengers who were waiting at Dabolim airport to take the flight to Bangalore, very probably for work, were also stranded. They were finally accommodated in a Jet Airways flight at 2.30 pm, and reached their destination later in the evening. Let us not even begin to talk of how much precious fuel was unnecessarily wasted.
All these passengers are liable to be compensated by the airline, for a delay exceeding two hours. But is it going to make up for their missed work? So much of loss, caused to so many people and to the airline, because of one unjustified, arbitrary and capricious decision by the Navy’s Dabolim ATC… They may have the power, but is it fair that they abuse it in whichever way strikes their fancy? But even the highest official at Dabolim airport cannot take action against the erring ATC personnel; the ATC at Dabolim is not managed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI), but by the Navy.
If, after this, anybody still believes the Navy’s glib assurances about how their takeover of the islands off Goa and the Bimbvel beach will not affect local fisherfolk and tourist boat operators, they would have to be extraordinarily gullible!