Flight Analytica

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.

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