A
long time ago, when IA was the only
airline operating domestic flights, I had to take a flight from Calcutta to
Ahmedabad. The flight was via Patna. Scheduled to depart at 5pm, the airline
announced a 2-hour delay as the aircraft hadn’t arrived from another location.
Once it arrived, there was further delay and we learned that there was a
bomb-scare and security was checking the aircraft. We finally took off around
9.30pm. Just after take-off and about 2000ft, the aircraft (the older B737-200) went into a “rock n roll” mode. It was bouncing up
and down and jerking left and right in a seriously violent dance. It is
difficult to describe the experience but I can compare it to a truck travelling
at 100 KPH over a road full of rocks and stones. That’s how violently bumpy it
was. I thought it would stabilise in a few minutes but it did not. There was no doubt we were going to crash. Nobody
moved, the seat-belt sign never went off, the cabin-crew too remained seated.
After about 30 minutes, the air-hostess
announced we were about land at Patna and there was a sense of relief.
While
descending, I could see miles and miles of lights and was a bit stunned because
I didn’t think Patna was all that big a city to extend to such distances.
Anyway, we did land safely and once parked, the captain made a crisp
announcement “This is your captain, I couldn’t speak to
you earlier as I was busy. Our flight ran into a thunderstorm and we have
returned to Calcutta”. Well, that explained why the city lights seemed
to extend to such long distances. Yes indeed, the captain was so busy handling
the aircraft he didn’t speak to even the cabin crew during the flight. Everyone
who is a frequent flyer (or an unlucky infrequent flyer or first-timer) is
likely to have experienced troublesome flights. But modern-day aircrafts are
built tough enough to withstand the toughest weather, toughest turbulence and
toughest flight conditions of all sorts. That brings us to the strangely
troublesome flight Rahul Gandhi & Co
had when they flew from Delhi to Hubli
(Karnataka) on the morning of April 26.
Delhi
to Hubli (now spelt Hubbali) doesn’t seem to have direct flights and,
therefore, a regular airliner would take over 4-5 hours flight time with a
stop-over or two. Maybe that’s why RahulG chose a chartered flight from Religare Aviation. Private charter
operators mostly look after their own aircrafts and keep their own security for
the aircraft although overall security of the airport where they are parked is
under govt forces. By evening on April
26, there was news all over that RG’s plane had developed a snag and went
through a “freefall”. The Congress team and his aides who flew with him
started screaming “sabotage”,
implying there may have been an attempt on his life. The sidekick who enlarged
this claim, Kaushal Vidyarthee, also
wrote to the Karnataka Police implying sabotage:
While
claiming some mechanism may have been “tampered”
with, Vidyarthee and another guy who flew with Pappu, Rahul Ravi, were all praise for RG’s “calmness and composure” during the troublesome period of the
flight. This is utter balderdash and as comic
a farce as it can get. First of all, I don’t think these guys understand
the meaning of “freefall” of an aircraft and there is every reason to believe
that like many other incidents and riots, this was another scripted drama by Cambridge Analytica. Let us examine
each and every aspect of these claims a bit more. The aircraft involved was the
Dassault 2000 VT-AVH as carried in
reports:
1 There are no witnesses to
the freefall and dire situation claimed by RG and his Congis other than himself
and his own sidekicks. The pilots have refused to comment on the issue and
naturally so. So, any story can be concocted and peddled because there is no
independent witness to corroborate it.
2 The pilots have not
commented but there is no reason to believe that operators of a private charter
cannot be part of a grand conspiracy theory. Along with the sidekick who made
out a complaint to the police, the
pilots must also be investigated of being accomplices in this foolish
conspiracy.
3 Like I said before, modern aircrafts are built to take
extraordinary stress and can even face the mother of all turbulences. All
aircrafts, big and small, go through some turbulence at some point in flight.
This is known as “Clear air turbulence” (CAT) and there are a variety of air
turbulences, one worse than the other caused by strong head winds or even
thermal turbulence when nearing the earth from a height.
4 Congress claimed the
plane had to make an “Emergency”
landing. If a plane had to make an emergency landing, it would do so at an
airport on the route, somewhere around Kolhapur or Belgaum. Why would it fly all the way to its
destination (Hubli) and then make an emergency landing? ABSURD! Even so, in
an emergency, the pilot calls “Mayday”
and the ATC acknowledges and the airport involved clears the runway for the
distressed flight and fire engines and rescue teams are alerted and kept on
stand-by. NONE OF THAT HAPPENED. The
Hubli airport director, Ms. SK Ahalya,
also stated that there was no technical snag reported and the plane landed on schedule at Hubli, around 11.40 am
or so. Pilots making “Mayday” calls are subjected to investigation along with
the aircraft. The pilot did not face any problems and did not make any Mayday calls, so the question of emergency is absolute
trash.
5 The aviation-geniuses of
RG claimed the plane went around and circled
a couple of times before landing. These guys must be newly born Einsteins.
There is nothing unusual about this. Sometimes, traffic and congestion at the
airport happens and a flight is advised to hover around in circles in the air
till final landing permission is given. If not that, even when pilots, when landing,
when not sure of having made the correct estimates, often turn around and fly
back to land properly. This is a normal practice and procedure and is called a
“Go around”.
And
for all this nonsense, the Karnataka police filed FIRs against the pilots without
as much as investigation of any kind whatsoever. Regular cops are incapable of
investigating flight troubles. And news channels reported that the Karnataka
cops would examine the black box of the aircraft. This is as absurd and as
comic as it can get, because regular cops do not have the wherewithal to
analyse these flight data boxes:
The
whole episode smacks of a “concoction”
best credited to Cambridge Analytica
to gain some kind of sympathy for Pappu who has been failing in every direction
he falls or slumps. The next day after the flight, April 27, he even insulted
the national song (Vande Mataram) by
having it cut short to save his un-precious time and had to be nudged to stand
up for the song. That is why you cannot prop up a dumb character to victimhood
no matter what you do. The best part of the whole flight is that Congis and the
sidekick, Vidyarthee, claimed that the aircraft
went into a freefall for about 500 metres and RG was standing beside the
pilots guiding them. Obviously, the moron doesn’t know that aircrafts don’t go
in to freefall unless they “stall”
and are unable to fly. Sometimes a “stall” does happen during flight, but not
long enough to go into a freefall that the captain cannot manage. But how on
earth could a person be standing next to the pilots during a freefall?
The
biggest aircrafts, just a while before landing, become just “Gliders” as they reduce speed before
landing. Flight 143 of the
Canadian World airlines suddenly found that due to a wrong calculation, they had run out fuel at 41000 feet.
That was a brand-new Boeing 767 they were flying with around 60 people on
board. From 41000 feet it had a “freefall”
and still became a glider. It glided all the way to landing. The only problem
in landing was that front wheels had jammed and there was a crash landing.
Nobody was killed and the plane didn’t go through extraordinary damage. The
whole farce of Rahul Gandhi and his
conspiracy theories of “sabotage” is the biggest air-farce I have seen in
recent times. If there is a serious investigation, that will be proved beyond
doubt.
