The nation has received the news of the crashing of a small 20 year-old carrier aircraft of BSF the other day near Dwarka in Delhi. The aircraft carried a tem of engineers heading towards Ranchi for repairing a helicopter there. Ten parsons along with the pilot got killed in the tragic accident. The Directorate of Civil Aviation has ordered an enquiry into the accident.
This is sheer tragedy and somewhat inexplicable. The Air Traffic Control had cleared its flight. Only a few days ago the aircraft had ferried teams. Twenty-year- old aircraft may not necessarily be considered obsolete. The pilot is reported to be a veteran. How come the accident happened and precious lives were killed. Though in normal course of things, one may say that the twenty-year old aircraft should have been grounded and declared unusable, that was not done.
The lesson that we have to learn from this tragic incident is simple. We need to phase out the old and outdated aircrafts and strictly stop allowing them to take to the air. Secondly, the inquiry will try to find out when was service done to the machine and what kind of repairs were carried out if these were needed. The quality of repair work needs to be scrutinized. The aircraft is reported to have swirled in the air soon after take off which shows that some snag had happened and the pilot wanted to return and land but the snag prevented from even landing properly. The inquiry will find out all what has happened. The immediate action needed by all concerned and the civil aviation ministry is to immediately order close checking of all machines that are old and worn out so that those declared unserviceable are grounded for all times. We cannot risk precious lives because that is a national loss.
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