One year. Three hundred and sixty-five days. One hundred and fifty-eight souls incinerated on a runway in Mangalore. And yet, like a stubborn stain on a Savile Row suit, six questions linger, unanswered, mocking our collective intelligence.
Let us, dear reader, uncork the bottle of inquiry and pour ourselves a stiff measure of truth, diluted only by the bureaucratic obfuscation that has become India's national beverage.
First: Why did the pilot, Captain Zlatko Glusica, a man whose CV boasted more hours than a Swiss watchmaker’s apprentice, choose to nap at the controls? The cockpit voice recorder reveals a silence more profound than a Trappist monk's vow. Was he seduced by the siren song of the sandman? Or was there a more sinister lullaby at play?
Second: The co-pilot, First Officer H. S. Ahluwalia, a man whose name suggests a certain Sikh martial prowess, seemed to be operating under the delusion that the aircraft was a hang-glider. “We are too high,” he chirped, moments before impact. A prophecy so accurate it borders on the psychic. Why did his warnings fall on deaf ears? Or were those ears simply filled with the cotton wool of complacency?
Third: The aircraft, a Boeing 737-800, a workhorse of the skies, had a Ground Proximity Warning System that shrieked like a banshee. “Pull up! Pull up!” it pleaded, a voice of reason in a madhouse. And yet, the pilots, those masters of the firmament, ignored it. Was it a protest against automation? A Luddite rebellion in the cockpit? Or simply the hubris of men who believe themselves immune to gravity?
Fourth: The air traffic controller, a man whose job title suggests he should have been watching the sky, was instead, by his own admission, “distracted.” Distracted by what? A particularly riveting episode of “Kaun Banega Crorepati”? A daydream about his upcoming vacation to Goa? We may never know. But his distraction cost 158 people their lives. A statistic that, in the ledger of human tragedy, remains unforgivably neat.
Fifth: The runway at Mangalore, a tabletop strip perched on a plateau, is a known hazard. A pilot’s nightmare, an aviator’s challenge. Why was there no Instrument Landing System to guide the plane in the monsoon gloom? Was it budget cuts? Bureaucratic inertia? Or the simple, stubborn refusal of Indian aviation to learn from its own mistakes?
Sixth: And finally, the most haunting question of all: Why, in the year that followed, has there been no accountability? No resignations. No firings. No heads on pikes. The investigation, that great engine of obfuscation, ground on, producing a report so bland it could be used as a sedative. The families of the dead, those ghosts in waiting, are left with nothing but questions and the cold comfort of a government that has perfected the art of doing nothing.
So here we are, a year later, nursing our gins and our grievances. The Air India crash is a closed file, a footnote in the annals of aviation. But those six questions, they linger, like the smell of burnt kerosene on a wet runway. They are the ghosts that will not be exorcised, the splinters that fester under the skin of a nation that would rather look away.
I, for one, will not look away. I will continue to ask these questions, to pester the officials, to drink their gin and mock their excuses. Because that, dear reader, is the only way we will ever get any answers. And even then, I suspect, the truth will remain as elusive as a decent gin and tonic at a wedding reception.
Until next time, keep your seatbelt fastened and your cynicism sharpened.
