Flights to and from Northeast fumble in blind zone
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110215/jsp/calcutta/story_13584169.jspc
Flights between Calcutta and the Northeast are not only among the shortest but
also short on safety, passing through stretches of airspace where pilots are
caught between two air traffic control towers that aren’t even on talking
terms.“Around 5,000 people board flights between the city and various
destinations of the Northeast every day. unaware that luck and piloting skills
are their only insurance along stretches of Bangladesh and Indian airspace
where communication methods are primitive and radar surveillance is
non-existent,” said a senior representative of a private airline.Danger No. 1
is apparently the lack of communication between the Calcutta and Dhaka control
rooms despite all flights to the Northeast flying over Bangladesh airspace.Even
after a pilot negotiates that stretch safely, he or she can’t afford to
relax.“Apart from Guwahati, no other airport in the Northeast has radar
surveillance. So voice communication with the ATC is
the only lifeline available to pilots,” the airline official said.With
Guwahati, voice communication by VHF (very high frequency) equipment is often a
problem because of signal disruption caused by the hilly terrain.“When that
happens, a pilot needs to contact Agartala ATC to convey a message to us, which
in this day and age is ridiculous. We have been requesting Delhi to install a
radar in Agartala for the last eight years but nobody’s listening,” said an
official at Borjhar airport in Guwahati.Not for nothing does a veteran like
Capt. Sarvesh Gupta of Jet Airways find flying to and from the Northeast
“stressful”.“Many of us have raised these safety issues at meetings of the
regional operations committee. The Indian and Bangladesh authorities need to
open a channel of communication to realign routes and review the communication
process,” said a pilot of another airline.So why do Calcutta and Dhaka ATC
behave like hostile neighbours when
air safety in both countries is at stake?Officials at the city airport claimed
that the hotline between the two ATC units had never been used because of a
manpower shortage. Worse, the radar at Dhaka airport malfunctions at regular
intervals.“The voice communication frequency with Dhaka ATC is often jammed and
it’s quite an ordeal communicating one’s aircraft position to them,” said a
senior pilot based in the city.On February 5, an Air India flight on the
Calcutta-Imphal route was on a collision course with a China Eastern airline
flight till the pilot made a last-minute adjustment in altitude.A
miscommunication between one of the pilots and ATC personnel at Dhaka airport
had allegedly led to the flights maintaining the same altitude.“Such
near-misses have taken place on the Northeast route several times,” an official
said.Pilots partly blame the two-decade-old air traffic surveillance routes for
the perils of flying to and from the
Northeast. “The volume of traffic has increased almost five times but the
systems are the same,” said a Northeast veteran.Flights from Calcutta take
either of two routes to the Northeast, one over Rajshahi and the other over
Kumilla. Apart from the 25-odd aircraft flying between the city and Northeast
destinations like Guwahati, Jorhat, Mohanbari, Agartala, Imphal, Silchar,
Dimapur and Aizawl, the route is used by around 50 other aircraft.A plane
taking off from the city enters Bangladesh after flying barely 30 nautical
miles within the Calcutta flight information range. The aircraft then covers
around 100 nautical miles before entering the Northeast, where it flies another
25 to 150 nautical miles depending on the destination.“As there is practically
no communication between Calcutta and Dhaka, pilots keep them informed about
their altitude, speed and other details. But there is always a chance of
miscommunication and no second line of defence,
especially when a flight is switching from one flight information range to
another,” he said.
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