There is something terrible about an airplane crashing. Or the fear of one crashing while you are on it. Experts will educate you that statistically air travel is the safest form of transport. They are right. But this information is of no help to someone who has some degree of fear of flying. In a car crash or train wreck it is all over in a matter of seconds. But in an air disaster, in the worst case you maybe left waiting for certain death for minutes. Minutes that can feel like hours. Also unlike in a train accident, where it is impossible to see it coming, in an air crash you may sense something wrong until the inevitable becomes obvious. The lingering fear, and the uncertainly about how long it will last make air travel very scary for some.

I’m personally not a nervous flyer. But I have worked in the industry far too long and have learned that there are many things that can go wrong, even if they appear very normal on the surface. In the Air India crash the passengers probably sat through the terror for about 15 seconds. The first 15 seconds would have felt like a normal takeoff. Then at least for those seated at the window, it would have become clear that something is terribly wrong.

Expectedly, experts are out with theories. Air India is being slammed for poor maintenance of their fleet. I have myself not flown Air India for a long time, but by most accounts, the condition of Air India fleet seems to be poor. Passengers often complain of rattles, worn out seats, malfunctioning air conditioning and non operative entertainment systems. It could be argued that none of these have any bearing on air safety. But organizations that slack, generally slack on all fronts. I find it difficult to believe that Air India does an abysmal job in providing passenger experience but an outstanding job in maintenance. As someone who has worked in the aircraft maintenance business for several years, I really hope Air India is not compromising in such a critical area.

The allegations of poor maintenance also come as a surprise to me. While working in the MRO industry I was made to believe that Air India has very good maintenance capabilities, primarily because it is government owned and gets funding easily for any capability it wants to develop. This belief was further strengthened when we were invited by Air India to have a look at one of their avionics testing facility in New Delhi. They had invested a lot of money in the facility – it was an overkill for their fleet size and they wanted to form some sort of JV with us to help them market the excess capacity. In Mumbai a few hundred feet from our hangar stood the large Air India hangar which we sometimes used for carrying out specialised tasks for which we did not have capability or approval. It never occurred to us that Air India was not well equipped on the maintenance side of things.

But Air India keeps getting in the bad news with alarming regularity. In 2015, their engineer got sucked into an engine while the aircraft was getting ready to taxi out of the apron area. Their low cost subsidiary Air India express has had two fatal accidents – in Mangalore and Kozhikode. None of them happened due to poor maintenance. Airlines that fare no better in customer surveys such as Spice Jet and (the now bankrupt) Go First have also managed to remain fatality free. Indigo, one of the largest airlines in the world now, also has a blemish free record. Clearly, the problem is not ‘Indian’ as some would like to believe.

Jingoistic news anchors and Twitter trolls have been asking why Air India is still associated with Turkish companies. They have been demanding that Air India severs all ties with Turkish Technic, one of the most reputed MROs in the aviation world. I don’t know if these people are really that dumb or just pretend to be dumb. As if some organization will so obviously jeopardise a reputation it has built over the years for the sake of politics. That is, assuming Turkish companies are jingoistic about India like the way we are about them. Digressing a little bit – I have visited Turkey and the ordinary people do not give a damn about India Pakistan relations and are unlikely to take sides in a conflict. They don’t know much about Pakistan to begin with. In fact the liberal Turks have a poor opinion of them because so many poor Pakistani migrants frequent their streets, appearing to do nothing productive. In contrast Turks recognise India more, thanks to Bollywood. The Indians in Turkey are almost entirely tourists or expats. You won’t find Indians roaming around the streets of Turkey aimlessly and in gangs of men. That is not to say that they have a great opinion of us. They don’t. Like most western countries they treat both India and Pakistan as dirt poor, backward countries, neither worthy of sabotaging the reputation of their own companies like Turkish Airlines or its subsidiary Turkish Technic.

I am very eager for the findings of the investigation to come out in the open, like I am after every air accident. I am also eager that Air India gets serious about a turnaround. It is India’s flag carrier and perhaps one of the worst reputed flag carriers in the world. We have been hearing that the turnaround is WIP for the longest time now. Being from the industry, I cannot believe that a turnaround should take this long, unless Tata is facing some serious challenges with the legacy staff. After all, the Tatas were running Vistara successfully before they decided to make the Air India problem their own. Which reminds me, Tata has a stake in Air Asia India too. This gives you a glimpse into Tata’s desperate attempt to claw back into the airline industry. They first got a foothold via the Air Asia JV, then partnered with Singapore Airlines to launch Vistara, and finally their dream of getting Air India back into their fold materialised in 2022.

Why the Tata group was so desperate to get into airline business is a mystery to me. The only reasons I can see are emotional. Airline business is brutal. In my opinion it is the most difficult business in the world to run profitably. It is also operationally very complex and has the added burden of ensuring safety like no other business has to. Barring Indigo, no other airline in India has cracked the formula consistently.