Tabletop airports are safe,say pilots

As Mangalores tabletop airport came under sharp focus following Saturdays plane crash that killed 158 people,the fact that Runway 24....

As Mangalores tabletop airport came under sharp focus following Saturdays plane crash that killed 158 people,the fact that Runway 24 (on which the ill-fated IX-812 touched down) has handled over 32,000 successful landings since it was commissioned in 2006 underlines the fact that landing a plane on a tabletop airstrip is not an issue as far as the pilots are concerned.

A tabletop airport is essentially an airport surrounded by deep gorges. Normally constructed by chopping off the top of a hill,tabletop airports are often thought of as tricky for landings because of their surroundings.

The only thing a pilot has to do differently while landing on a tabletop aircraft is to disregard instruments like radio altimeters which give out auto-callouts. There are special procedures in place to deal with a tabletop landing and pilots who frequently land on tabletops do these landings almost effortlessly, said an Air India pilot,requesting anonymity.

Captain Zlatko Glusica,the 55-year-old UK national originally from Serbia who was commanding the IX-812 flight,had made as many as 19 landings at the Mangalore airport ever since he joined Air India in 2008. With a total flying experience of 10,200 hours,of which 7,630 hours were as a commander,Glusica,experts feel,was unlikely to have made an error of judgment,even more so because he had landed planes safely at Mangalores tabletop airport. His co-pilot,Captain H S Ahluwalia,too had made 66 landings at the Mangalore airport.

In India,we have tabletop airports in Calicut,Lengpui in Mizoram,Kullu and Leh. Then there are tabletops in Kabul and Kathmandu where Indian carriers land frequently. The fact that a tabletop airport has rarely been in the news for the wrong reasons goes on to show that operating on one is as safe and routine as on any other conventional airstrip, another pilot explained.

Significantly,tabletop airports are being increasingly thought of as viable in hilly and inaccessible areas. Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh,for instance,is one place where the government has been actively pursuing the idea of constructing a tabletop airport.

Tabletop airports are not an issue. Mangalore airport is much better to land on than Leh. What is critical here is the flight duty hours a pilot is being made to put in. Fatigued pilots are often susceptible to what we call micro-sleep, says Capt Sabu,general secretary of the Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA).