Simply Fly

by Capt G R Gopinath

  I produced four theses, and each was in itself a learning experience. After clearing that, participants had to write a fifth. This thesis would entitle them to a degree from any of the five universities. I was not so much interested in a degree as in acquiring knowledge and insight into management, though perhaps I was a little over-anxious about failing. I had, however, been sucked into the whirl of my helicopter company, and indeed when Henry Mintzberg and his team visited Bengaluru, Deccan Aviation was just a month old. They made Deccan a case study and they provided me with very valuable feedback.

  I had settled on 5 September as the date of the launch because on that night I had to take flight to Montreal for the McGill leg of the course. I would be away for almost a month and I wanted to launch the company before leaving. Others in the team felt we should fix a date after the helicopter was actually inducted into the company but I was firm. I said, ‘The helicopter will arrive in India and 5 September is the launch date’.

  The helicopter was to fly into Bengaluru on its own power. It occurred to me that a flight-worthy helicopter should have no technical problems because it had to be certified by the DGCA of the exporting country for export-worthiness and air-worthiness. An aircraft is subjected to stringent safety checks and documentation at all stages and modes in which it has existed right from the day of manufacture. The DGCA of every country is punctilious about documentation and insists that the operator strictly follows the rules and guidelines set out in the manufacturer’s manual. I realized that the Indian DGCA would be as stringent about documentation as the others. Without in any way intervening in the documentation and certification processes which are very important from a safety point of view, I asked myself whether we could request the Indian bureaucracy to compress the time from twenty days to two. The DGCA, like other departments in India, tended to take longer than similar agencies elsewhere in the world. I checked with my engineer Vidya Babu who had worked both under the Indian DGCA and various foreign ones. He knew all the nitty-gritty and was intuitive about such issues. Babu said the issue was not safety but documentation. I then decided that I would not allow more than two to three days between the arrival of the bird and the launch of the inaugural flight. The Indian bureaucracy is not used to such short notice. Bureaucrats take their time either because they expect something or because they are ‘bureaucratic’ in the worst sense of the term. I have however also come across, in various departments, including the DGCA, many committed bureaucrats who are ready to help and expedite when the cause is just and honourable but who feel strapped because of systemic constraints. Being the incurable optimist that I am, I shocked not only the DGCA but also all my colleagues by providing for only a two-to-three day hiatus between the arrival of the helicopter and the launch of the first flight.

  There are people in government service who are honest and and have impeccable credentials but they can be frustrating because they are obsessed with rules and regulations. I had decided to use every resource at my command and invoke every influence I could, to ensure that the helicopter took off on the date fixed for the launch. The helicopter was expected on the morning of 1 September. The die was cast and no one could change it, not even me. People were incredulous. Some thought I was crazy. It would have been safer to get the aircraft first, obtain the licences and clearances, and only then schedule the date of the launch. I realized that if we played too safe we could go bankrupt before the business even took off.

  I hit upon an idea. I would approach the minister of civil aviation, C. M. Ibrahim, in prime minister Deve Gowda’s ministry. Ibrahim hailed from Karnataka with a not overly encouraging reputation. He was rumoured to have stopped Tata–Singapore Airlines from taking off, he and his colleagues opposing the venture and grounding it. I was visibly nervous. How would I tackle roadblocks that he might place in my path?

  I went straight to him and told him abut my company. I said, ‘I want you to come and flag off the inaugural flight’. Ibrahim readily accepted. The meeting ended in two minutes and I was speechless.

  I had figured that if he agreed to bless the occasion, all clearances would fall into place. People in power who can dispense favours are able to see through you instantly when you ask for something that is not legitimate and beyond your due. They recognize that you are trying to cut corners and they expect their pound of flesh. In that case you are no different from them. When a person offers an inducement, called ‘speed money’ without violating the law, he is probably a victim of the system. It is however bewildering to often encounter people who pay to flout and bend rules while at the same time pompously harangue about corruption in society! Such people are far more venal than corrupt bureaucrats or politicians. Arun Shourie once observed, ‘The reason why the system does not work is because all of us have our little deals.’ On the other hand, if you comply scrupulously with every rule in the book, adhere to every process that is legally necessary, and you invite the minister to inaugurate an event, the bureaucracy tends to bend backwards to see that all clearances are pushed through and the minister is saved from any potential embarrassment. Especially when one is not asking for something out of turn.

  The security clearance process was exhaustive. All the directors required clearance from the point of view of drugs, terrorism, anti-national activities, criminal past, and on the like. It was time-consuming and exhausting. This meant that the CBI, Drug Enforcement Agency, the RAW (for intelligence clearance), Enforcement Directorate, and the police, among other agencies, would need to scan the present and the past of the directors. We soon discovered that we had come up against an obstacle and our files seemed to have disappeared into a ‘black hole’. Gen. Narahari wrote a stern letter to the home secretary as chairman of Deccan Aviation. I was worried, if the letter would offend the officials, but the home secretary himself replied graciously and promptly. The clearance was granted within a week.

  The only outstanding clearance were of a technical nature and largely from the DGCA. Even though others approached the DGCA with trepidation because it is known to exercise an iron grip over operators, I calculated that this should not take more than two or three days. The others rightly viewed this as reckless optimism because in practise it normally took two to three months for such clearances.

  Our helicopter was owned by a Japanese company and had an American registration. It was to have been flown out of Nepal with an export certificate of air-worthiness from the US as it operated under the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), the American counterpart to our DGCA. Before we could take possession of the helicopter, the aircraft needed various clearances for entering Indian airspace and release from the Indian customs. Finally, we needed a commercial charter licence from the DGCA to operate the helicopter.

  I also invited the chief minister and other ministers to join the civil aviation minister for the inaugural flight. With immense confidence in my ability to pull it off, I placed an advertisement in the newspapers and sealed the future. I assumed that because their bosses would be the chief guests, the ministry and the DGCA would do their extra bit and oblige with the necessary clearances. We appointed Hindustan Thomson Associates as our agency. HTA was then the largest advertising agency in India, but our account was very small. The marketing manager and the accounts manager from HTA came to meet me. They were only interested in the size of the budget and realized we would try and pinch costs wherever possible. They wanted us to hire an event management company but I decided not to. HTA was clearly disappointed but did a good job. The invitation card said: ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’ There was a collective realization among all of us that Deccan Aviation was taking its first step towards a great future for the country.

  All was in place, and we just waited for the helicopter to arrive. We were in for a minor shock a day before the helicopter was to take off from Nepal. The lease agreement bound us to make a six-month deposit before the helicopter physically took off. The funds were already in my bank account and could have be
en remitted, but there was a hitch.

  If an aircraft was entering Indian airspace it needed both import permission and a YA number, which is valid for 24 hours only. A YA number is an international code issued by the DGCA of countries to a specific aircraft with a specific registration and serial number to enter a country’s airspace. This is provided to the air-traffic control and the air force. These agencies recognize an aircraft with the flashing YA number as a legitimate flying object in the local air space. If it does not have a YA number it is turned back or the air force planes force the intruding aircraft to land.

  We had the YA number and the import permit for the helicopter but faced some difficulty. In those days of tight foreign exchange control, the Reserve Bank of India controlled every dollar leaving the country. The reforms had begun but a comprehensive approach had not yet been evolved about foreign exchange remittances. Today, in many situations, you can transfer millions of dollars from any bank with a simple note from a chartered accountant. In those days, however, to transfer even one dollar you required RBI approval.

  Mohan Kumar prepared the document for RBI’s approval. The application that went with it said the company sought permission to transfer money abroad for the helicopter. We suddenly hit a roadblock. The RBI guidelines stated that the money could only be transferred after the goods, in this case the helicopter, landed in India.

  The aircraft was actually outside the country and we had to send money to the Japanese leasing company to fly it in. The leasing company would not let us have the helicopter unless we paid a six-month advance on lease rental. The RBI regulations stated that if we did not have the aircraft in the country, as tangible proof of import, they would not permit the transfer of funds abroad. One way out was to get a bank guarantee from the leasing agency undertaking that the six-month lease rental advance would be returned to us if the company failed to send us the helicopter.

  The RBI rules had been freshly formulated as a reaction to a fraud which came to be known as the notorious ‘urea scam’. Following the urea scam, in which millions of dollars had been siphoned off without any urea actually being imported, the RBI had issued a rule that ensured receipt of the goods for which money was being transferred. This rule caught us off guard.

  Members of the former prime minister Narasimha Rao’s family were implicated in the scam. The opposition went for the jugular seeking to further embroil the ruling party. Its objective being to gain political mileage rather than unearth the perpetrators of the scandal. Political parties have alternated in power, and over the decades there has been a series of scandals and exposés. People related to the ruling party and the parties in the opposition have often found themselves implicated. However, the actual culprits have never been traced or convicted! Those implicated in the urea scam were also acquitted! And no one knows what happened to the money.

  I knew that Doug would throw a fit if, at this last moment, I asked him for a bank guarantee. It would also appear to be ludicrous for someone who trusted us with a helicopter worth crores of rupees, to think of giving us a bank guarantee for the measly deposit, in relative terms, we were giving them. He would never understand the logic of the RBI which had its own legitimate concern going by the recent past record of importers. We had two days to go. Mohan Kumar said we should have placed this condition at the time when the lease contract was being prepared or opened a letter of credit. We failed to do either. It was a very embarrassing situation for me. It would appear to be an issue of lack of trust from our side or that we had been sloppy in our attention to details.

  We were running out of time and I eventually overcame the embarrassment and called Doug. I explained to him that we had been caught off guard and that we were in a spot. I explained that it was a slip-up on our part and apologized, and added that it was the RBI that needed a bank guarantee and not us. ‘Doug,’ I pleaded, ‘I have the money. You have to trust me. We’ve announced the inaugural event, printed the cards, and invited people. I will not betray your trust. You will be proud of this association. The money will be in your account within twenty-four hours of the helicopter landing in India.’

  There was a long silence on the phone. I waited with a prayer in my heart. After what seemed an eternity, Doug replied. ‘You will have the helicopter tomorrow. It will take off from Kathmandu. Don’t let me down.’ Then he hung up.

  The helicopter took off on 30 August from Kathmandu and touched down at several towns for refuelling. It was to land at HAL airport on 1 September at 4 p.m. We were waiting at the airport with great excitement. Bhargavi and I, Ponnu and Jayanth Poovaiah, Maya and Sam, and Vidya Babu and his wife experiencing a sense of ‘it’s-too-good-to-be-true’! A dream was about to become tangible.

  One or two incidents, however, occurred before the helicopter finally arrived. Vidya Babu suggested that I meet the local head of the DGCA who would be expecting me to call on him on a courtesy visit. I went over and gave him the invitation card. I said this was my aviation company and that it should make him proud that the company was based in Bengaluru and that the DGCA was part of the great new journey. ‘You will be able to control a larger fleet if you facilitate the growth of this company,’ I said, asking him to bless the launch.

  K. Parameshwar, the local DGCA chief, was overwhelmed by my rhetoric but he recovered rapidly and, assuming the tone of one who is in control of the sector, said, rather coolly, ‘Captain, that is all fine! But you should have consulted me on the inaugural date after the helicopter arrived in India and only then printed the card. You’ve gone and printed the card even before the helicopter has arrived. I am shocked.’ He reminded me that even large corporate houses like the Tatas and the Mahindras put their helicopters into service two or three months after they were brought into the country. He was baffled that I had sent out invitations and prepared for the launch even before the helicopter had arrived. It was even more incomprehensible that I had decided to inaugurate the airline within four days of its arrival.

  I explained to Mr Parameshwar the logic of my actions and saw that he was dumbfounded both by the tone and manner in which I spoke.

  The YA number had been issued the day before and the aircraft had taken off from Kathmandu on schedule. We were in radio contact with the pilots throughout its journey. The helicopter had flown into Indian airspace the previous day and landed in Varanasi, the first port of entry. The customs wanted to do the clearance there. That would have meant a delay of two days. We wanted the customs clearance to take place in Bengaluru and requested the customs authorities in Bengaluru to call up Varanasi the previous day and ensure it did not get delayed.

  The Varanasi customs authorities agreed to undertake ‘rummaging’ of the helicopter, a physical search for drugs, guns, and contraband. They would check the aircraft, the pilot, the cargo hold, and the belly to ensure that no contraband was being carried, but actual customs clearance of the machine would be undertaken in Bengaluru. The helicopter had taken off from Tirupati after refuelling and we now waited with bated breath and eyes glued to the north-east sky, the direction of the holy city of Tirupati. My feelings are difficult to describe, akin to those I experienced when the first inflorescence appeared on my first coconut tree after eight years of watering and tending. Now we could hear the unmistakable hum of a chopper somewhere in the distance. Blood raced through the veins and there was excitement all around me. Then we finally heard the unmistakable sound of the helicopter approaching and a barely perceptible dot appeared over the horizon.

  Jayanth has the sharpest vision among us and was the first to spot the helicopter. He pointed it out to the rest of us. One small speck grew in size and became visible, its sound became increasingly distinct. The helicopter soon hovered above and landed right in front of us like a giant metallic bird. We had garlands ready. We gave the Nepalese pilots a hug and bouquets of flowers. Everybody went around the helicopter and touched it. We all shared a single, overwhelming emotion. The mix of quiet relief and joy soon however, gave way to crisp bu
siness as customs officials swooped down on the machine.

  The customs officials asked us to stay away from the helicopter, undertook another ‘rummaging’, and sealed the helicopter. It was bonded and taken into their custody. We left the airport while the pilots secured the helicopter to anchor pins with weights to prevent its being blown away by a storm.

  I had three days left. There were many tasks to be accomplished. Getting the customs clearance was the first. That would be a major hurdle. The customs still had a medieval ethos. In the early 1990s, if you landed at an airport, there would be more customs officials than passengers. Although the high-tariff regime was slowly being dismantled, a dichotomy of mechanisms had already been created, one dealing with the purveyors of contraband and the other with ordinary passengers. On the one hand, the regime encouraged big-time smuggling and let off those bringing in contraband for sale in the parallel market: the so-called Myanmar bazaars of the various large cities. Smugglers brought in contraband in boatloads, and no one could explain how with such a strong customs force there could still exist a thriving black market. The Myanmar bazaars featured an intricate labyrinth of shops that sold all kinds of imported goods that had by-passed customs. On the other hand, the same regime encouraged customs officers to pounce upon hapless passengers returning with little gifts: a digital watch, a cassette player, a bottle of whiskey, or a box of chocolates. In the eyes of the customs official, everyone was a smuggler: housewives, old people, tourists, even children. No one was spared scrutiny.

  In such a scenario, something like a helicopter coming in would grab eyeballs. Fortunately for us, the government had a very liberal, prudent customs policy towards aircraft. So as long as an aircraft was brought in for public service, with a licence for charters, there was no customs duty but if you brought in a helicopter for private use, you paid it. In fact, the import permission by the DGCA was itself deemed to be a licence. A public notice had been issued to that effect by the Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT).