When the Bajpe airport at Mangalore was built in 1951, it was designed to handle small aircraft like the Dakota that carried 21-28 people. By the 1980s, larger aircraft entered operation and Avros with over 40 seats started landing at the table-top airport. Over the decades, the airport was upgraded to handle even larger aircraft.
Instead of building a modern, greenfield airport with infrastructure large enough to handle bigger aircraft like the Boeing B737-800 or Airbus A320 without constraints, the government maintained its focus on upgradation of Bajpe.
This is not to blame the Mangalore airport, especially since it has been certified as safe by the directorate general of civil aviation. Of course, the blame can be fixed only after the probe into the tragic crash is complete.
The larger point, however, is that a big, modern airport with longer runways and allied facilities could enable pilots to handle a Mangalore-like situation better. Upgrading a facility that is nearly six decades old is not the same as building a new one. Considering the growing traffic in the area, especially the large number of international passengers, ideal planning should have led to a large airport near Mangalore that could cater to traffic from nearby regions of Karnataka, Kerala and Goa.
That could have allowed airlines to operate smaller aircraft at Bajpe while larger ones could have land at a regional hub that, in turn, connected to neighbouring airports like Hasan and Kozhikode. In the process, the tragedy at Mangalore could have been averted. Questions about safety of the airport would not have arisen if it was not a table-top airport and had a longer runway.
It’s not that warning signals were not there. On August 19, 1981, an Avro aircraft operated by Indian Airlines overshot the Bajpe runway as well as the safety area, and was about to slip into the adjoining valley. The aircraft was virtually hanging at the edge of the cliff and it was a miracle that the passengers were saved. The Avro caught fire and its landing gear broke. The aircraft had to be written off.
This disaster did not serve as a wake-up call and the government persisted with upgradation of the Mangalore airport. Then, a public interest litigation by Bangalore-based NGO Environment Support Group questioned the safety of the Bajpe airport and the authorities kept insisting that all was well.
Finally, even civil aviation minister Praful Patel had spoken about the need to extend the Mangalore airport’s runway for getting it an international airport status. The reason could be different, but his emphasis was clearly on extension of the runway.
Instead of engaging in an endless debate over cause of the Mangalore tragedy, the government should now plan a modern, large airport in the region without delay. The track record of larger airports such as Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad speaks for itself in terms of safety.
The simple reason could be much larger and modern infrastructure. Let’s compare Mangalore airport’s runway length of 2,450 m with the larger facilities. The runway at Mumbai is 3,200 m, Bangalore 4,000 m, Hyderabad 4,260 m and Delhi 4,430 m.
Without doubt, all of them are better equipped than Bajpe and much safer since they are not located on a hill. They also have navigation systems with much more capacity and more fire tenders to tackle emergencies. They also have better road connectivity to large hospitals so that medical facilities can be made available without delay.
There could be an argument about the cost of developing new infrastructure. How about the loss of lives, which are priceless? Compensation for passengers and associated costs result in a huge outgo. The country also needs to think in terms of building infrastructure for future, rather than meeting existing demand.
The reasons are not clear but larger airports in the country have a better safety record. The A320 crash at Bangalore took place when the old HAL airport was in operation. In Mumbai, aircraft have managed to survive after skidding on the runway in heavy monsoon rain. The history of Indian aviation has several examples of tragic crashes at smaller airports like Ahmedabad, Imphal, Patna and Aurangabad.
The logic is not that small airports are risky, but larger airports are safer. There are over 100 airports and airstrips in the country, but many of them are non-operational.
Rather than just holding on to them, the government should move forward with an airport development plan that results in a dozen hub airports of top international quality infrastructure. Each of these hubs should be connected to a number of small regional airports that handle small aircraft, but are fully equipped in terms of modern infrastructure.
This could be commercially viable too since air traffic in the country is growing at a healthy pace and proposals for new airports at places including Goa, Rajasthan, Kerala, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh are pending. If traffic keeps growing at the current pace, soon many existing airports would find their infrastructure inadequate.
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