<If you knew the basics of VTOL training, you would know that a pilot needs to be comfortable on a full length runaway, before he transitions to the very difficult VSTOL mode, used for carrier launch/recovery..>[Gilbert Menezes, March 21]
Maybe this is something like starting car driving lessons on an empty football field! But how long does one do that? What percentage of Dabolim operational time is used for getting raw hands comfortable enough to transition to V/STOL mode? What is the learning curve like in flight training? Doesnt look like we will be able to get this information very soon. Whether it takes a lot of time or a little, we are still left with the question of why "only Dabolim?" Remember we are not talking about Dabolim as a military base but as a training base. Maybe trainees cant be shunted from one air station to another for different phases of their training in an attempt to reduce the "no fly" time at Dabolim. If the thought has even crossed the eminent minds of the Navy top brass that would be something! Anyway this brings us to the issue of Kochi which has been neatly sidetracked by all the hullaballoo on Juhu. The Navy got exclusive use of Kochi air station after a new civilian airport (CIAL) was was commissioned in 1999. That was 6 years ago! In this period nobody in Goa seems to have thought fit to pressure the Navy to shift flight training to Kochi air station! Maybe the excuse given was "Wait for Seabird". Then Seabird comes and we are told "wait for Phase 2"! Meantime a deal is signed in Jan 2004 (as a world wide launch customer, for heaven's sakes!) for a variant of the MIG 29 which is carrier borne. The alarm bells should have gone off in Goa then. Now we are told that the training for this, starting 2007/8 will indeed be based at Dabolim. The problems with the military/defence establishment in Dabolim are however not isolated. It was precisely such problems that led to greenfield projects being launched in Kochi and Bangalore. Then we heard about problems with the IAF in Pune. Pune too is slated to have a greenfield airport to "sidestep the conflict with the military". Ironically in connection with Pune's problems the IAF chief acknowledged the need to cooperatively manage scarce resources like airfields but nothing further has come of this. This may be the real key to such imbroglios but no one is thinking of it. We also heard about problems of the air space over North India being controlled by the military and preventing a reduction in overflight times by international airlines. Now we learn that Delhi needs 4 runways to cope with traffic growth and of the two it already has, one is reserved exclusively for the use of the airforce. This means a 50% capacity constraint. (How does the Dabolim restriction compare I wonder?) Discussion of Dabolim on goanet seems futile. We are just being led up the garden path. The Navy has no intention of shifting training out and it should never be allowed to take over Dabolim exclusively. We nay need to find another forum where the impasse due to the drag of defence on Indian civil aviation can be addressed meaningfully in the context of the upsurge in air traffic and tourism.
