ONE feels shocked at the most tragic accident of Bhoja Air plane at Rawalpindi on April 20 in which 127 people perished.

After the untold grief subsides a little, the inevitable question will be: how did this happen?

It may be recalled that the families affected by the Airblue crash and the travelling public are still asking the same question and the inquiry held into the crash is yet to see the light. This should not happen again.

I understand that the director-general of the Civil Aviation Authority has ordered an inquiry into the accident and detailed one of its officers to do it. The officer may be competent in his own right but the enormity of the tragedy demands that the federal government should order a board of accident inquiry, headed by a serving or retired judge of the Supreme Court, to evoke confidence in the fairness of the inquiry.

Provision of such an inquiry already exists under Rule 282 of the Civil Aviation Rules 1994. After all, what does this rule exist for if it cannot be invoked in such disasters?

Another reason for ensuring fairness is that the director general of the Civil Aviation Authority, whether he likes it or not, is himself an interested party because it is his job to see that a Pakistani commercial aircraft is airworthy in all respects before it takes off, the pilot is fully competent to fly it and the ATC and navigation facilities are perfect.

The reason being that unless an act of God intervenes or the pilot is solely to blame, the regulatory authority may not escape the responsibility. It is too much too expect that the CAA director general’s own officers will find fault with him.

S. M. ANWAR Karachi

Negligence

THE Bhoja Air plane, with 127 passengers on board, that crashed near Chaklala, Rawalpindi, on April 20 was said to be 30 years old. The Supreme Court must take now a sou motu action with the aim to curb any possible air accident in future again on the basis of corruption and irresponsibility.

I extend my condolence to the bereaved families and pray to God to rest their souls in heaven and grant patience and courage to their loved ones to bear this great loss. Ameen.

ANWAR HUSSAIN Karachi

Flight safety requirements

A LOT of rubbish is being published without the knowledge of vital flight safety requirements and pilot’s responsibility and the responsibility of the air traffic controllers in the control tower.

According to the director-general of the Met Department, two weather warnings were issued and duly communicated to the civil aviation authorities concerned. Air traffic controllers on duty at Benazir Bhutto International Airport were surely duly informed of the bad weather prevailing at the time.

The first weather warning was issued by the meteorological department at 3pm and the second at 6pm. Thunder and lightning was forecast and was being seen by the officials in the tower, who should have advised and ordered Captain Afridi, the Boeing-737 pilot, to divert to Lahore or Peshawar.

Air Traffic officials at Chaklala had the authority to divert the Bhoja flight. The Black box, which has been recovered intact, will reveal as to the advice about the bad weather given to Captain Afridi. If despite being infromed of the very adverse weather at the time, Captain Afridi pressed on to land the aircraft, then he was fully responsible for the grave consequences and the death of 127 people.

However if the Black box reveals that the captain was not informed, then the air traffic officials on duty at the time must be brought to justice for the grave loss of lives and property.

Benazir Bhutto International Airport has first class radars to guide and monitor flights. Evidence of the radar controllers will be vital to the evidence of dangerous weather prevailing at the time.

The Air Blue accident in July 2010 was avoidable. It was due to human factor, pilot error, and poor monitoring of the flight by inefficient radar and air traffic controllers.

The Bhoja B-737 crash inquiries by a judicial commission and technical commission are in order. I hope time is not wasted.

The Bhoja Air B737-200 was fully airworthy. It had flown for over two hours from Karachi to Islamabad, and was about to touch down when it suddenly went down as a fireball into the ground.

The stories that the B-737 was hit by hail, and lightning and, therefore, exploded in the air are not logical. Thousands of Boeing 737-200, 300 and 400 models are flying with hundreds of airlines worldwide.

Some domestic airlines in the US have hundreds of these on their inventory. The B-737 had an outstanding record of technical reliability and flight safety.

To say that it was a 27-year-old jetliner and unfit for flying is based more on emotion than on the safety record of this fine aircraft.

There should not be any witch hunting based on the ill-conceived motive of tarnishing Bhoja Air. Bhoja had a fine record of safety when it was flying Russian passenger aircraft till 2000.

AIR MARSHAL (Rtd) AYAZ AHMED KHAN Los Angeles

A brother’s view

I WOULD like to share some of my feelings about this tragic air crash as my brother Raza Ali Feroz was also travelling with the other 126 passengers and crew members.

There may be many causes of the air crash: the airplane was not strong enough to sustain the hard weather or there was some human error or some technical defect that we have lost our brothers.

There will be some judicial investigation by some commission or by the Safety Investigation Board to ascertain the real cause but we all knew that after passage of some time or may be months or years a report will surface, probably by amending any old report by changing some details as date, venue or description and everything will become normal.

My brother was a gold medalist, serving as technical director and a leading member of a pioneer group of sugar technologist.

He was a national hero, a poet, a writer, a conversationalist, a palmist, a teacher who loved to guide people around him for career building and other socio-economic issues.

We should appreciate the efforts of all those officials who were available every moment.

We have still failed to develop a disaster management system which may be equipped and trained to handle such situations. It is not only a matter of a few hundred people; it is for humanity and the nation.

SYED MASOOD HASAN Karachi

CAA’s laxity

SAFETY standards for planes should never be compromised. It seems the Civil Aviation Authority has shown laxity in dealing with private airlines.

In a country where awareness of legal obligations is almost none, no one challenges the wrongdoings of mighty organisations.

Heart-wrenching scenes were seen at the site of crash which call for justice from the senior officials of the airline.

While the nightmares of air passengers continue, two planes of Shaheen Airline have narrowly escaped accidents. One plane’s tyres burst while landing due to fault in the landing gear and the other had a leaking fuel tank while taking off that forced it to land back.

The above state of affairs of airport management speaks volumes of their performance.

SUBHA SAFDAR AWAN Islamabad