‘Fire, Not Impact, Likely Killed More On Board’: Ex-Air India Pilot on Crash
Captain Minoo Wadia says the Air India crash was not a crash, but a “controlled crash landing”.
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In a tragic incident on 12 June, an Air India flight from Ahmedabad to London crashed shortly after take-off, killing 241 passengers and crew, with just one survivor.
Besides those on board, 33 people on the ground were also killed as the plane crashed into the hostel building of the BJ Medical College in the Meghani Nagar area. The cause of the crash is not yet known, and investigations are currently underway.
To understand the developments, the safety protocols involved, and what may lie ahead in the investigation, The Quint spoke to Captain Minoo Wadia, founder of the Federation of Indian Pilots and a former Air Force and Air India pilot.
Excerpts from the interview:
Based on what's known so far, what is your initial assessment of what could have happened?
No one at this point of time will know exactly what has happened, till we have more facts and data available from the voice recorder and the DFDR [Digital Flight Data Recorder] availability.
There could be multiple bird strikes, mechanical failure of fuel, injection systems, a pilot error. There's no point in saying this is exactly what happened, etc. But what is a little intriguing is the very fact that the undercarriage was down. We are not sure whether the flaps were deployed or not deployed.
As soon as a pilot takes off an aircraft, he puts the gear up, maybe at less than 50 feet or 100 feet. If he was getting the normal power and things were normal during the takeoff, the right thing he would have put the gear up.
The very fact that the gear was not up—maybe it did not go up when he tried, or maybe even at that point in time he must have faced some emergency, realised that there was a problem, and purposely left the gear down. Because in any crash landing, it is advisable to keep your gear down and land the aircraft.
In the event of an emergency, what is the immediate protocol followed by the pilots? Is a ‘Mayday‘ call always issued?
‘Mayday‘ is important, but it is not the first priority. The first priority for the pilot is to keep the aircraft under control and to sort out the emergency. So he sorts that out immediately and simultaneously or as soon as possible, he declares a ‘Mayday’.
In this particular case, what is important is the period of time involved. From the time the aircraft has taken off, at this point in time we are not 100 percent sure whether the aircraft had full power, normal power, and at what stage did the engines fail to give him power. It could be a few seconds before actually the sense started, because the inertia could have carried him to 600 feet. So at the point of take-off, it has just been about 11 seconds for him to reach about 600 feet.
And thereafter, if you see the wings are level, normal, and it is coming down into a gradual glided descent. So I would not call this a crash, I would say the pilot did a controlled crash landing, and maybe if there was a clear area in front of him this many more lives could have been saved. Because the ideal thing is to do is to put it in a clear space where there's no buildings. But I'm sure most of the cities today in India have built up buildings and a lot of build up areas.
How do you see the investigation unfolding—and what are the levels of transparency that we can expect?
I think transparency you can expect totally, a 100 percent. I don't think there should be any problem on that front, but on the first day everyone was asking, tell us what happened - no one in the world, not even the best authorities, people are sitting in Delhi, or DGCA, will know exactly what has happened at this point in time.
There are two important black boxes, the voice recorder and the DFDR. The voice recorder, you can take out immediately and hear the voices and what happened in the cockpit. It is possible that they may have already heard the voice recorder.
However, the DFDR is a very complex instrument, and it has been improved over a period of time for so many years, and for it to be downloaded itself will take a couple of weeks, and thereafter these are digital formats ,which are produced by the DFDR. To interpret this information also will take experts. So that will take some time.
This is the first major crash involving a Dreamliner. But there have been several concerns earlier. How do you view that in this context?
I don't buy that theory at all, because both Airbus and Boeing have been in the business for a very long time. I know some of the people who operate in the production test pilots also personally, and they're extremely professional, receptive to changes, and receptive to ideas. I don't think they will compromise on air safety at all.
But there have been several whistleblowers from Boeing that have been raising alarms over several years. Do you think these concerns concerns are relevant to what has happened?
Not relevant to what has happened. But overall yes, they are relevant. For for example, recently there was an interview of the CEO of the Boeing Company was interrogated by the Government in America, and he was posed a lot of questions.
But that does not mean that the aircraft is unsafe. That does not mean that this safety has been compromised. To the best of my knowledge, and knowing these aircrafts for so many years, I don't think safety would be a compromise by any of these large manufacturers.
What do you think are the most common safety lapses that generally lead to crashes of such a high scale?
Almost all the accidents are rated by human error or mechanical error. So human error, the rate has not fallen down over the last so many years, but mechanical defects have been rectified and have improved on it, and the aircrafts made safer to a far greater extent. So the mechanical errors have fallen drastically, but the human errors have not fallen drastically yet.
What role does the DGCA, Air India, and the Ministry of Aviation play in ensuring accountability in such an incident, where so many lives have been lost?
I am little hesitant to tell you about the DGCA. But I have not been happy at all about the safety record of India and the systems followed, and the main reason for these lacunas, and the same main reason why the accident rate is higher in India than all around the world, is essentially due to the DGCA.
It's not my opinion that I'm expressing, I'll give you Flight Safety Foundation's figures. All over the world, the accident rate is approximately 1.5 hull losses per 1 million departures. That's an average for the world. People who have good safety records and are practicing independent safety audits, etc, like America, Europe, Japan, and Australia, they have a safety rate of 0.5 to 0.4 to 0.6. I don't want to mention India's record to you, because I'll frighten your viewers.
I'll explain to you why I'm saying this about the DGCA. I'm from the Air Force, so I have a regimental way of functioning. When I came to the civil, I realised everyone was abusing the DGCA. I went into a little bit of details and found out that in the whole office of the DGCA, which is a technical office, there was not a single aviator.
This is about 30-35 years back. There was not a single aviator in the whole office of the DGCA, there were only bureaucrats. How do you expect a bureaucrat to understand technical aspects of aviation? Things have improved over a period of years after a lot of pressure has been laid.
The sole survivor from the crash - how do you reckon this happened? How did he survive?
On the first day, as soon as the crash happened, and we saw the aircraft coming down, I was fairly confident that there'll be far more survivors for the simple reason that at that point in time, we didn't know this hostel was right in front of the runway, etc. But the way the aircraft was coming down smoothly and in a controlled manner, with wings level and like almost like gliding down, and it was undercarriage down. Undercarriage is required to take an impact of any crash. So I expected a lot more people to survive, but because it went into buildings, there was a huge fireball and the whole aircraft got fired.
Most people would have died not because of the crash itself, but because of the fire that happened on the aircraft straight away. So this particular person, I believe his seat got blown and he landed somewhere else. He must have just been lucky enough to have some cushioning effect and was able to unstrap himself, and walk out of the aircraft.
Could give an example of in what ways India is failing in terms of safety?
I'll give you specifics. In most countries in the world you have an independent safety board, which does not have any Tom, Dick, and Harry. It has safety experts. There's a program called Accident Analysis, and there's a course on accident analysis for aviators. It doesn't necessarily have to be pilots, there are engineers and other qualified aviators also who do an accident analysis course.
Now that course is put into practice, and those are the people who actually do the investigation because they're thoroughly programmed and understand the details. What can happen, and why, and how the human body behaves and how the human mind behaves! So there have been studies carried out at the various stages as to when a human mind is supposed to react to what emergency.
India is lacking that. I've insisted for the last so many years to have an independent safety board. They have started a safety board after this incident, but it is certainly not independent, because on 12 June, the Director General said [in the news] that he reports only to the Secretary of Civil Aviation.
That is not an independent Safety Board. It has to be really independent, with no one sitting on top of that authority. They have to be qualified people there, and they have to be independent, to freely assess and direct how to improve aviation safety in India.
Watch the full interview.