The Hindu Business Line : Lessons from Brazil crash — Indian aviation ‘over-shooting’ safety norms

On Tuesday an Airbus 320 belonging to TAM Airlines, while landing at Sao Paulo’s Congonhas Airport could not stop on the 2000-metre runway, veered to the left, crashed through the airport boundary wall, crossed a highway and hit a petrol station and then a building adjacent to it.

The aircraft was destroyed and everyone on board besides several others on ground were killed. In March 2000 at Burbank, California, a Southwest Airlines 737, though landing in wet conditions, came in high and fast, and crashed through the airport barrier and stopped next to a petrol station. All on board survived miraculously.

The two accidents should be an eye-opener for India

Are our runways built to prevent such an accident?

Are there enough precautionary measures to prevent a similar disaster?

Dangerous Omission

Most airports in India have petrol-pumps nearby. None of the runways has either RESA (Runway End Safety Area) or EMAS (Engineered Materials Arrestor System). EMAS is a bed of lightweight, crushable concrete built at the end of a runway to stop an aircraft that over-shoots with minimal aircraft damage. An EMAS is usually provided when there is space constraint for RESA.

The EMAS at New York’s JFK Airport has averted accidents at least in three cases of over-shooting of aircraft, including a Boeing 747. Without RESA or EMAS, airfields in India are disasters waiting to happen.

After a series of accidents in Sao Paulo, a court had banned jet aircraft from operating at the Congonhas airport until the runway met safety standards. The runway was recently re-carpeted. Yet, an ATR aircraft had overshot the runway just two days back on the same runway.

The TAM Airlines accident happened just a few days after the airport was reopened. Only the investigation report will throw light on what caused it.

There have been several instances in India of aircraft over-shooting runways, especially wet ones.

The Airports Authority of India would claim that all runways meet international standards and that friction tests have certified them to be safe. But are the friction tests realistic?

The testing equipment weighs about 200 kg and the tests are conducted at speeds of around 80 kmph. Aircraft weigh several thousand kilograms and land at over 200 kmph.

The figures that ground testing equipment give are only of academic interest.

Runway Condition Report

Of importance is the actual runway condition report. Weather reports only mention that a runway is wet. For a pilot, this would mean an increase in the landing distance by 30 per cent. During a heavy downpour, as in monsoons, the runways fall into the ‘flooded’ or ‘contaminated’ category. This requires that the landing distance is increased more than 200 per cent. In India no runway is that long. Airports at Patna, Raipur, Dibrugarh, Varansai, and elsewhere have nothing close to the safe landing distance required when it is raining heavily. Pune’s runway is positively dangerous if landing in rain.

One of the pointers after a 2005 Southwest Airlines crash at Midway, Chicago, was the calculation of the landing distance. The company dispatchers had consulted computers and concluded that the landing distance was enough. But it was not, as it turned out. Human error compounded this mistake.

In India, we do not have the luxury of computers to calculate the landing requirements to be passed on to aircraft in air. Pilots have to make a quick decision, in the limited time available. If the runway condition report is incorrect, only luck can save the aircraft and the people on it. Indian aviation is expanding too fast but without much thought to safety issues.

(The author is an airline captain with 35 years flying experience.)