Protocol before Safety?

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On Monday, Mumbai airport witnessed the most bizarre instance of the obsession with protocol taking precedence over the safety of passengers. At 9.25 am, Air Traffic Control (ATC) gave clearance to Indian Airlines Flight IC 866 to Delhi to take off. The pilot of the airbus who was taxiing on the runway was preparing to go full throttle for takeoff, when at 9.26 am the ATC ordered the pilot to abort takeoff. Considering that it takes a passenger aircraft just about 38 to 45 seconds to be airborne after a full-throttle run, the pilot must have been just a few seconds away from being airborne. An order to abort takeoff at that stage was most irrational and hazardous, and could easily have resulted in a major accident. But what could have been the reason for such a bizarre course of action? The reason was that the President of India and her entourage had taken off in three helicopters from the INS Kunjali naval air station in Colaba and would be flying in an Air Force plane from Mumbai airport to Gondia in Maharashtra for a function. The Air Force helicopters had given their arrival time at 9.20 am but the first helicopter had arrived early. The ATC, instead of instructing the first helicopter to wait until the Indian Airlines Airbus A-321 had taken off, told the pilot of the Indian Airlines flight IC 866 to abort his takeoff which would have taken less than a minute. This was indeed a very thoughtless course of action and could have resulted in a terrible collision if the pilot had not had quick reflexes. He saw the helicopter hovering about a 100 metres off the ground on the same runway and jammed the emergency brakes. This caused the aircraft to swerve to the left and one of its tyres to burst. One can well imagine the kind of panic that must have seized the passengers who went through the trauma of the emergency braking and the sudden deceleration and physical stress that results from such action. The most logical and normal course of action for the ATC would have been to tell the IAF helicopter pilot that he was a few minutes ahead of schedule, that a passenger aircraft was about to take off from the runway allotted to him and that he would have to wait a minute or two for landing permission. It is not a problem at all for a helicopter to hover in the air for a minute. But quite typically, the feudal urge to put the President’s entourage (not the President's helicopter, mind you) above the demands of passenger safety impelled the ATC to throw reason and the safety of about 150 passengers to the winds and opt for protocol instead. As it is, the President's helicopter landed only about ten minutes after the first helicopter landed at 9.28 am about 30 metres away from the disabled Indian Airlines plane. And just because someone in the ATC had this feudal urge to put protocol before public safety, the passengers of the Indian Airlines flight were stranded for a long time until they could be put on another aircraft with all their luggage also having to be transported from one plane to another.

The Indian Air Force has ruled out that its pilots could be at fault. It claims that the pilots carried out their instructions meticulously. The only problem was that they were a few minutes early. Even so, the Indian Air Force has instituted an inquiry into the incident. As things are now, it would appear that the servile and feudal mindset of the ATC personnel was to blame because even after having cleared the Indian Airlines flight, the ATC cancelled its takeoff within a minute just because there was hesitation to tell the pilot of the helicopter of the President's entourage to wait for two minutes before landing. The Ministry of Civil Aviation ought to institute a proper inquiry into the incident and also instruct the ATC personnel that passenger safety comes before protocol every time — even if the President of India has to wait a couple of minutes. source: the sentinel assam