Report Card

 
 

With the DGCA having just published the airline performance data for Jan'09 the feeling is hardly of elation. It is much like a school boy who has not performed well, but could've done worse! The performance of an airline is basically measured in terms of its load factor which is simply the percentage of seats booked on all their flights. Here's a summary of the load factors. As always, the statistic speaks for itself.

 

Airlines	Load Factor
Air India	22.60%
	66.00%	International
Air India Express	33.90%
	74.90%	International
Alliance	54.50%
GoAir	63.80%
Indian Airlines	60.40%
Jet Airways	64.70%
	74.90%	International
JetLite	67.50%
	72.60%	International
Kingfisher	64.20%
	71.00%	International
Paramount	83.10%
SpiceJet	68.30%
Total:	64.20%
	70.40%	International

 

 

As is evident the load factor continues to be less than 65% which is making flying unsustainable for most airlines. The possible solutions for this would be reducing capacity.

Separation - is a good thing.

In so far as human relationships are concerned, separation is something that is dreaded. It has the ability to bring ill-health. In aviation, not so.

Maintain separation, and you'll do just fine. Take for instance the Chakri-Dadri disaster. Two planes hugging each other midair - catastrophe. One of the worst disasters in aviation history. The cause and effect ladder coming into play behind it is a whole different story altogether. What I wish to underline here is the fact that for the "health" of the aircraft and their occupants, you've got to maintain separation between them!

After that incident, the DGCA (Director General of Civil Aviation) made it mandatory for aircraft to carry on board ACAS/TCAS (Airborne/Traffic Collision Avoidance System) equipment. Making India only one of the few countries back then to have this rule in place. 

The system works on the simple principle that if two aircraft were to collide they'd have to be at or about the same altitude AND be approaching each other. So how does it work? A transponder in each of the aircraft transmits its altitude, whenever it receives a Mode C interrogation. This, identifies the aircraft as well as makes it visible as a dot on the RADAR display at the control center. This information is also utilized by other aircraft in the vicinity, to calculate if they're on a collision course. If that is the case, it triggers an alarm. A few binary information is exchanged between the aircraft where the Collision Avoidance Computer calculates a best possible path to evade the conflict.

There's more to it..... but guess I should catch some sleep. Intricate details, I'll discuss later! Thanks for reading.

Every dark cloud, has a silver lining

Is it not amazing, the number of times a stark discovery has been made out of something trivial (the falling apple!). Or the number of times a great invention has just been an accident?

But how many times have you seen a completly avoidable tragedy being the impetus for the implementation of an existing technology, that could've avoided the tragedy in the first place, to prevent it from recurring?

This article alludes to the introduction of the GPS system into the field of civil usage. The Global Positioning System, GPS for short, is a system comprising of satellites that can precisely locate a given 'receiver' on the surface of the earth (or airborne). Before the incident of the Korean Airlines Flight 007 incident, the GPS had been an exclusive property of the US Department of Defence, not intended to be used by the public in general.

The KA flight 007 from New York, after a stopover at Anchorage, was headed  to Seoul, South Korea. The prepared flight plan took the aircraft over international waters. But, due to the aircraft losing its heading and the pilots not recognising the deviation from the flight plan, the plane ventured quite some way into Russian airspace without the necessary clearance. The ill-fated flight was, not long after, shot down by Russian fighter jets.

So, the next time you use GPS to navigate your car, you know to whom you owe the availibility of the technology - the 269 lives that were on board.

The silver lining? The world can now use GPS, and is a safer place from that standpoint.

Murphy's Law!

Last year, a brand new Airbus A340-600 was parked at the Airbus assembly plant ready to be handed over to Etihad. I had just undergone its test flights successfully, when the engineers (either Airbus or Etihad, don't know which) started their tests.

To check the performance of the engines, all the four engines, with the parking brakes applied, are taken to take off power, on a virtually empty aircraft. The flight computer raises an alarm, since the aircraft hasn't been configured (with respect to slats/flaps etc) for take off although the engines are at take off setting.

To silence the nagging alarm, on of the engineers pulls out the circuit breakers for the Ground Proximity Detector. This fools the flight management computer into thinking that the aircraft is airborne. And hence, it releases the brakes. This, in fact, is a safety feature incorporated to prevent the pilots from accidentally landing with the brakes applied. With the engines running at full power, and no brakes, it hardly takes the brand new airplane to transform into a heap of expensive junk.

Just another example of the Murphy's law: If anything can go wrong. It will.