The Hindu : Pilot's mother for audit of serviceability

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Aug 20, 2003

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Pilot's mother for audit of serviceability

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI AUG. 19. Kavita Gadgil, mother of a young IAF pilot who died in a MiG-21 crash two years ago, will meet the Defence Minister, George Fernandes to discuss issues related to making military aircraft flying safer.

The meeting, proposed by Mr. Fernandes in a letter to Ms. Gadgil, is seen as a follow-up to the one she had with the President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, at Rashtrapati Bhavan earlier this month.

Ms. Gadgil would be asking the Defence Minister to set up an independent board of experts to carry out a squadron-by-squadron audit of aircraft serviceability since it had been established that a third of the accidents involving the MiG were due to technical failures. She would also appeal to the Government to make public the remedial measures and the timeframe in which this would be achieved. Also, she would be insisting on making accident investigation more transparent and prevention-oriented, rather than a blaming exercise.

"This disturbs me," she told The Hindu about the Government's revelation in Parliament last week that it bought 27 second-hand trainer MiG-21s from Kyrgystan and Ukraine for Rs. 2.5 crores a piece and one of them crashed in Srinagar killing both the pilots.

"Everyday I pray to God that I won't get to hear of a crash. I am really concerned about my boys. I was never so worried when Abhijeet was flying."

Pointing out that the Abhijeet Air Safety Foundation was a movement to improve air safety and not part of a campaign against the armed forces, she wanted the IAF to be more sensitive while dealing with relatives of pilots who die in air crashes.

In particular, she referred to an indemnity bond that asks relatives to meet part of the funeral expenses. "They did not take money from me, but kept chasing me. In the end I told them that this was no road accident. Abhijeet laid down his life because the machine failed him and yet you are asking for funeral expenses."

"People who could not change the indemnity bond in 50 years are talking about changing aircraft. It is not just the question of replacing outmoded forms and aircraft; it is a question of mindset which appears to be stuck in a groove, at least in the case of the MiG-21s," she said.

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