Given the fact that most international airports, Chennai included, operate like fortresses with extreme levels of security clearance required, it is worrisome that the slew of accidents inside have been blamed on ‘personnel error’.
While most of the workers — employed by the AAI, individual airlines or ground-handling services — are supposed to be highly trained and extremely able, top AAI officials believed that the rot in the quality of staff is what is behind the trouble. “If you look at all the incidents, it is always because the driver or operator involved made a mistake. At the airport, mistakes can be catastrophic,” says an official from Air Operations, rather dourly.
Though the accusations seems more like a generalisation, it is irrefutable that most of the men who were involved in all six accidents this year were employed by contractors — all of them were only employed on a contractual basis, save for the Air India staff.
“We only check the credentials of the ground handling company we engage and it is impractical to check the background of every person they use. That defies the purpose of outsourcing work,” opines a personnel manager with Jet Airways. And though the contracted ground-handling companies deny it, most of their workers — drivers of cabs, buses, tractors and cargo loaders — are usually school dropouts; at best they are eighth standard pass or twelfth standard pass.
“The companies argue that they cannot find a college graduate to drive tractors, but you see, we are driving these tractors near planes that are worth crores and not in paddy fields,” argues an airline official who was involved with the repair of a Kingfisher flight that was damaged 10 days ago.
The repairs are not only expensive for the airline, but also ground the plane for many days till a host of clearances are obtained. Usually this results in several flights having to be cancelled or other flights rescheduled —which is bad for business.
So, what about action on the accidents that ocurred earlier this year?
“On every occasion, the plane has been assessed by our safety team and it is usually grounded immediately if there is even the slightest doubt. We immediately investigate who has committed the mistake and take stringent action. People have been terminated for past incidents, and we have also suspended a few. Usually, an incident is followed by safety training sessions and exercises to make sure these problems don’t recur,” assures Airport Director H S Suresh.
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