CHENNAI: As the summer settles in, frequency of air travel continues to soar. Families flying out for vacations, students returning from abroad, and the usual hubbub of business trips means that the number of flights per day is ever growing. With so many of us frequently hopping on flights, concerns regarding safety are bound to arise.
Revolving around the subjects of safety, risks, and angst during flying, on April 23 at Hyatt Regency Chennai, captain Ashim Mittra and captain Nikhil Mathen of IndiGo took an informative session on what is being done to ensure risk-free air travels possible, on the invitation of Rotary Club of Madras. Ashim is a seasoned aviation professional who has been working in the industry for over 41 years.
Currently, he is the senior vice president of flight operations at IndiGo. To helm the session, he was joined by Nikhil, a fleet captain and type rated instructor at IndiGo, specialising in pilot psychology and the human factors of aviation. S Ravi, president of the Rotary Club of Madras, inaugurated the session, with a welcome speech, which segued into the day’s speakers covering the aviation industry’s philosophy on safety.
In aviation, safety not only means ensuring secure operations, but also involves identifying risks in the first place and working around them. Ashim said, “Identifying what the risk is the first step towards safety. Placing strong standard operating procedures to mitigate the risk and reduce it to acceptable accident-free levels is what needs to be done in order to prevent any kind of air accident.” It is undeniable that air travel poses vulnerabilities to travellers, but standard operation procedures ensure that these threats are contained and are manageable by well-trained pilots.
Most aviation hazards occur during the period of landing the flight, not while cruising or taxiing. It can be caused by a runway excursion, an abnormal runway contact or a runway incursion. Nikhil stated, “The key safety risk that anyone faces is runway safety. This is where most of the risk is concentrated.” Both the captains further emphasised how pilots spend around five hours every six months in flight simulators to train for any conceivable situation during landing.
Containing the human risk factor is always at the forefront of a pilot’s procedures at IndiGo. This includes extensive mental health coverage, peer support programmes, fostering a culture of open communication, and according to the two captains, having a ‘non-punitive policy’ in case a pilot decides to perform a go-around.
“Going around is always a good thing to do in the case of difficulty in landing,” said Nikhil. A go-around refers to the act of aborting a landing due to unsatisfactory conditions on the runway. Contrary to a popular belief, go-around is the safest course of action in unfavourable landing situations, and at IndiGo, pilots are asked no questions in case they decide to perform one. This essentially means that a smooth landing is not always the only form of safe landing. A firm, unbiased, and confident landing defines safety in aviation.
According to Ashim, safety translates to choosing the best course of action in any unprecedented situation. He added, “Compliance doesn’t always mean safety. Observing normal operations is not always the best thing to do when a pilot is faced with varying conditions.”
With this bold statement, the speakers took the audience into an analysis of the flight accident at Kozhikode in 2020, to illustrate how it is imperative to maintain a culture of prioritising a pilot’s wellbeing in aviation so that they can accurately judge when to adhere to normal protocol and when to take a diversion in order to ensure the complete safety of passengers. A 3-D video on the plane crash which occurred due to the failure in the functioning of the wiper, leading to poor visibility was also displayed. Alluding to the unfortunate hazard, Ashim said, “Human error can always be only a symptom of a problem and not the cause of the actual problem.”
The rate of fatal accidents by the four generation aircraft models was another area of focus. The fourth generation that is the fly by wire aircrafts, first used in 1988, is found to have caused least accidents around 0.4 % of the total compared to the three previous generation models. The session concluded with a brief question-and-answer session that assuaged any additional concerns the audience had regarding IndiGo’s commitment to safety.