At least 15 passengers were injured when a Jet Airways flight with 161 people onboard veered off the runway at Goa’s Dabolim airport on 27 December. Within hours, another major mishap was averted after an IndiGo and a SpiceJet flights came face-to-face on the runway at New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport.
In the face of all the criticism – and much ridicule, a pilot has now penned an anonymous blog to defend his community.
I’ll be blamed long before any proof is brought forward. I’ll be blamed by the media, by the people. I’ll be blamed by the passengers if they survive. In a week the data recorders will be analysed and then maybe they’ll find that it’s not my fault. That I fought for hope amidst hopelessness till my dying breath.
He further comments on how the media blows up things, giving the accident headlines like “pilot error”, or “pilot veers off runway when aligning for takeoff”.
He goes on to lament the fact that there are several technical aviation details that he can’t explain to his detractors.
“How I wish I could explain concepts of asymmetric thrust to the number of people passing silent judgment and being armchair jurors. How do I tell someone about how much thrust 27,000 odd pounds is? How do I reiterate what a reverser unlock is? How do I tell the person that the same 27,000 pounds is now in an opposite direction?”
“It's at the brink of frustration that I'm writing this,” he writes, adding that his blog was an appeal to “ the non-aviation public”.
“Believe that we as pilots love what we do and would never put anyone's life in jeopardy. We are sons, daughters, wives, husbands, parents, just like you.”
He ends his blog with an appeal to the media.
“It’s you who have sensationalised our profession with scandals, malpractices, and so on. Paint the right picture of pilots worldwide. Tell people that we are there to save lives, not take them.”
Though The Quint could not confirm, the anonymous blog was said to have been written by the Jet Airways pilot himself in a DailyO article.
This post has been updated.
Read the full blog here.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)