Daily Chennai - Tamilnadu, India

The week literally began with a bang in the wee hours of the morning at Chennai airport. A little after 3 am, a Jet Airways service vehicle hit an Air Deccan ATR due to take off for Coimbatore at 6.15 am.

The spate of accidents at Indian airports shows no sign of abating. Early on Monday morning, a private airline’s vehicle rammed into a parked Deccan ATR at the Chennai airport.

A Deccan spokesperson said: “Luckily no one was near the aircraft when the incident happened, at 3 am. The aircraft has been extensively damaged and will need to be grounded for about six months for very expensive repairs. We may take legal action.”

Deccan had recently lost one of its young engineers at Delhi’s IGI Airport when a speeding vehicle ran over her. Following this incident, a number of directives on airside driving were issued but clearly they are yet to have any real impact.

Jet Airways said that an enquiry has been kicked off by the ground safety department and action would be taken. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation will also conduct an enquiry into the incident. The Chennai incident is part of a growing list of near misses are happening across airports almost every day. Barely 24 hours earlier, lights went off at Mumbai’s international airport which threw landing and takeoff schedules out of gear for nearly 30 minutes on Sunday night. The DGCA is probing the reasons for the power failure which blacked out the runway and taxiing track lights.

Former pilot and aviation expert Capt. A. Ranganthan said the increasing number of accidents was a result of airlines taking shortcuts with ground safety, with greater pressures caused by more flights and increasing competition.

“Every airline is rushing their ground operations as they are facing greater time constraints. People are not giving enough attention to awareness training, and they are throwing precautions to the wind. Many of the operators of vehicles are temporary employees, and are unaware of the precautions that one must follow on the tarmac,” he added.

Categories: General, News