Simply Fly

by Capt G R Gopinath

Baba’s travel plans were fulfilled with clockwork precision. The takeoff was at 8 a.m. A security jeep in his entourage was the first to arrive. The officers riding in it surveyed the preparations. A second security jeep followed. The site had been thoroughly checked and all loose ends had been secured. The Baba arrived in a limousine. The large limousine stopped 500 yards short of the helicopter on the western side escorted by a jeep. Another followed. Six armed guards jumped out of the jeep in front and took positions around the limo. They had their backs to the Baba’s vehicle and kept a sharp eye on anything that might be lurking in the bush nearby. Their drill followed the security protocol observed for the American president. Another set of security guards threw a mobile cordon on either side of the Baba’s limo and ran alongside as it came to a halt. There was such perfection in their coordination that the security preparations made ahead of the visit of a head of state would pale in comparison.

  The Baba stepped out. He looked frail and gentle. He said a few words to me on his way to the helicopter. He then threw up his right hand in the air so that it was almost vertical. He proffered his palm to me, clenched to a pinch and dropped a few specks of sacred ash into my outstretched palm. He then moved towards Jayanth. I had warned Jayanth not to repeat any of the antics he had engaged in with Swami Kaleshwar. I had enjoined solemnity and a strict code of behaviour so as not to offend the Baba. I kept a sharp eye on Jayanth as the Baba stepped closer to him. Jayanth was as solemn as his physiognomy would allow him. The Baba asked him if there was something Jayanth wished the Baba could do for him. Maintaining his composure with great effort, Jayanth said, ‘Nothing, Swamiji, I just want your blessings’. The Saibaba did the same for Jayanth. He threw up his hands in the air, swirled his fingers like a magician, and offered Jayanth a gold ring embedded with a precious stone. Jayanth has boxer’s hands with thick, stocky fingers. The Baba seemed to have factored in the girth of his ring finger while conjuring the ornament from thin air. He himself put the ring on Jayanth’s fingers and said, ‘See how this fits you!’ It was a perfect fit. I am not sure that Jayanth became a believer, but for once he was speechless. The glint of mischief that lurks viciously at the edge of his eyes had suddenly lost its sheen, misted over with astonishment.

  The helicopter took off. I saw the Baba from amidst the select group of his devotees with expressions of utter reverence. They could have seen Indra (rain god) or Varuna (wind god) in the sky; were transfixed by awe as they stood there chanting, ‘Bhagwan, Bhagwan’ as the helicopter took off. They were lost in a trance for quite a while, as they stood rooted to the grassy patch until the helicopter became a speck on the horizon and to be seen no more.

  Baba was for me was a great lesson in business. I had witnessed the protocol of faith in action.

  8

  You can never plan the future by the past.

  —Edmund Burke

  Captivating Events at Deccan Aviation

  W

  ithin two years the helicopter company was firmly established. We had built a diverse portfolio of contracts: aerial survey, aerial photography, support to oil rigs, geophysical survey for mining, logistics support, heli-tourism, and medical evacuation, among others. The intuitive feeling I had when I ideated the helicopter company, that the government would eventually open up many of the more protected sectors, was being borne out. The government, which had prohibited privatization of mining, comparing it to selling family silver, soon realized that software exports were more remunerative than mines and began hesitantly to award private mining contracts. These were, for the first time in the history of India, to be awarded to large multinational conglomerates. These companies used aerial surveys and aerial photography to prospect large swathes of land covering thousands of square kilometres.

  The aerial surveys required specialized flying techniques because they involved carrying a heavy load of sensing instruments called ‘electromagnetic birds’. One of the important components of these ‘birds’ was a metallic cylindrical object about 6 metres in length and about 50 centimetres in diameter that dangled about 30 metres below the helicopter. Cables from the object were connected to a computer on board and data were sensed and collected. The pilot needed to fly in accordance with precise straight-line coordinates and scan a large area of land sometimes covering 100 by 100 kilometres, flying 100 feet above the ground, all the while keeping the ‘bird’ in a steady horizontal orientation. We sent our pilots to Australia and got them trained to operate these special survey flights. Investment in the extra training paid off. International companies like De Beers, Phelps Dodge, Rio Tinto, and prestigious Indian remote-sensing organizations such as NGRI in Hyderabad gave us contracts. These contracts not only strengthened our bottom line but also brought us enormous professional prestige.

  India was also opening up the oil sector, till then the preserve of government-owned public sector undertakings. Scottish company Cairn Energy in a joint venture with ONGC for exploration and production of crude oil, had sought bids from helicopter service operators for survey and logistics support for oil exploration in India. Helicopters are the lifeline of oil prospectors and miners, whether on land or at sea. Only those operators had a prospect of winning a contract who had had offshore experience in providing helicopter logistics support on the high seas. This demands very skilled technical engineering, and flying expertise which we did not possess. We sent in our bid but I had a feeling that we stood no chance unless we were able to tie up with the best helicopter operator, specializing in oil exploration and production in the world.

  I called Barry Havery, an independent aviation auditor for Cairn Energy, who refused to speak because, in his perspective, I was a bidder and so there would be a conflict of interest. Not easy to shrug off once I have made up my mind, I made several calls and each time he disconnected. Then I decided to make one final attempt. When the auditor picked up the receiver on the other side I blurted out, ‘Barry, don’t put the receiver down! All I want to know is who in your opinion is the very best helicopter operator in the oil industry, with whom I can negotiate a joint venture to bid for the Cairn contract.’ I said it would only help improve bidder quality and increase choice for cairn. Perhaps he was impressed by my logic, or, perhaps, simply wanted me off his back, but he muttered the name Bristow Helicopters, UK and slammed the phone down.

  With the same sense of urgency that I had manifested over the Enfield Motorcycle dealership, I headed overnight for Chennai, and took the next flight to London. The following day I was at Bristow making out a case for collaboration. I met Chris Fry, the director for Asia and the Far East, and we struck a common chord. I convinced him that though I needed one helicopter to begin with, oil exploration in India just having opened up as a sunrise industry: there would be many more to come in the future. By the end of two days I had made a convincing case and planned out a joint-venture document for signature. Just as we were about to sign, a veteran of Bristow, looking after some other region of the world, walked in to consult Chris on some matter. On learning that I was from India and we were about to sign a collaboration deed, he cut in. ‘What? ONGC? India? You must be mad!’, he exclaimed, elaborating how Bristow had a frustrating experience with ONGC and that itself should act as sufficient forewarning not to commit the same mistake again. Bristow had made a bid for a helicopter contract with ONGC in the 1980s and blocked one to meet the terms of bidding. ONGC kept putting off a decision on the tender and did not decide for an entire year. The helicopter remained idle but ONGC had still not decided so Bristow pulled out. In addition to investment that had been sunk, the company had opened an account to run its India operations. Bristow’s British pounds were in Indian rupees in an Indian bank according to rules but even after several years the company was not able to repatriate its own funds because of the foreign exchange regulations. Globally, helicopter contracts are closed within two months of the final date of bidding but the lack of a timely decision was frustrating for Bristow. The man was obviously bitter about the experi
ence and did not believe a new engagement with India would make any sense. He held out an alarm for his colleague, and in the process came across as rather final and brusque as he breezed out after his work was done.

  Chris looked at me and asked what was to be done. The incident was totally unexpected. I was completely taken aback by the way in which my country was shown in the poorest of light. The man was not wrong; but it was the sheer timing that seemed disastrous for my mission. How could I set things right? Not losing my composure, and also realizing that Indian bureaucracy was itself a British legacy, I said, hoping to sound convincing, ‘Trust me. Things are different today and India is changing. Our bureaucracy is a British legacy and you have had it here too until recently when Margaret Thatcher dismantled it’. Chris smiled. We had spent two days together, toiling over the contract and had developed an implicit faith in the future of our relationship. He saw that India was changing: so much was happening in the country that had not happened in the past fifty years since independence. Again, Chris had put in two long days into the thinking process and had a hunch. He smiled and we signed the collaboration document.

  The experience that Chris’s colleague had narrated, made me uncomfortable about Indian bureaucracy. I asked myself if there was no way to make it mandatory for Indian companies in the public sector to decide bids within a specific time-frame without of course compromising on quality and the country’s interests. It was obvious that they were being compromised when delays in decision-making discouraged and put off good companies wishing to do business with India. One recent example of the implications of bureaucratic delays is the debate over a new helicopter for the Indian Army. The government has been unable to decide which helicopter to choose for five years running. This illustrates the quintessential nature of political and bureaucratic dithering. There are obviously questions of what happens to current infrastructure for the manufacture of vintage helicopters. The consequences of such dithering could be serious, and serve as an example of what it means to compromise the country’s interests.

  After the collaboration agreement was signed I learnt that Bristow Helicopters had over 500 helicopters solely dedicated to offshore oil exploration. India had at the time about 100 helicopters deployed in multiple tasks. This gave me an idea of the future prospect for helicopters in India.

  Allan Bristow, the founder of the company who passed away recently, put helicopters to unusual use. He was the first to use a helicopter for whale-sightings on the high seas, a precursor to its eventual application in offshore oil exploration. Bristow put his early helicopters, running wooden rotor blades, to help locate schools of whale. Whales are located by the spray they spout when they surface. The spray rises high above the water and is easily visible from far. The whale hunters in Hermann Melville’s epic novel Moby Dick (1851) do the same. A sailor hoists himself to the top of the mast of the whaling ship and looks out for spouting spray through a telescope. When a whale is sighted, the sailor cries, ‘Whale, ahoy! Whale, ahoy! There she blows! There she blows!’ The entire ship is a-stir. Sea-hardened whale hunters descend in small boats, armed with harpoons and lances and rush headlong into the chase to row alongside, injure and weaken the whale, and then tow to the ship to extract whale oil. Bristow built an empire that is today the best and biggest in the oil industry. When, armed with the contract, I flew back I felt I had placed another brick on the edifice that we were painstakingly building. I recalled Napoleon Bonaparte words to the effect that it was a principle of war that it was not always canons but lightning speed that won battles.

  Vijay Atre had joined us as marketing manager, and he and I handled most inquiries for chopper services. Vijay was a young graduate from the prestigious Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) Delhi. We both looked after marketing and sales as I wanted to be personally involved with everything in order to be able to take timely decisions.

  Although I had given total freedom of initiative and action to all my colleagues, I was utterly impatient and unforgiving of people who delayed in the slightest in responding to customer calls and, wanted no gap between thought and action. Time was money, literally, to customers who hired our helicopters and slackness on our part could wholly undo their purpose and damage our business. In medical evacuation, time was the difference between life and death. I therefore laid down one cardinal rule in the company: no one would get off a call without resolution no matter when and where. The call had to lead to resolution, and everyone associated with operations had to move with lightning speed. I wanted them to shorten a straight line to reach their objective. Everyone had to carry their mobiles all day and all night, even when they went to bathe and, no alibi would be accepted.

  I got a call, one day, sometime between two and three in the morning. A doctor from Manipal Hospital was on the line. He said he needed to mobilize a helicopter for an emergency medical evacuation. A friend had once told me that in accidents and trauma the first one or two hours are the ‘Golden Hours’. Most patients died in the first hour or so of an accident if timely medical assistance did not reach them.

  Helicopter sales people would of course have to work within certain restricting parameters but would need to think on the fly. They would need to rapidly identify and acquaint themselves with the geography and topography of the site of accident or where the patient had been brought; need to know what their pilots and helicopters could or could not do. They would have to mobilize and synchronize parallel rescue efforts too, bearing the golden hour in mind. They would have to coordinate activities to get doctors or paramedics on board; ensure that life-saving drugs were at hand, have ground ambulances waiting, secure various mandatory clearances, and organize the logistics of refuelling for the return trip.

  The caller was neurosurgeon Dr N.K. Venkataramana, who had done commendable work in comprehensive trauma care across Karnataka. He said the wife of a colleague at the hospital had been seriously injured in a bus accident somewhere on the Bengaluru–Hyderabad highway. They did not know the precise location but it was about 200 km short of Hyderabad.

  Could we evacuate the doctor’s wife from the accident site? I agreed to dispatch our helicopter. ‘But’, I asked, ‘Who will pay?’ Dr Venkataramana said Manipal Hospital would bear the expenses. We got about setting up the operation.

  Medical evacuation, unlike other forms of charter, pulled at your heart strings. It was undeniably a humanitarian effort that could and did save lives. The bitter truth was that running a charter like an ambulance service without proper accountability could send the company into bankruptcy. If the patient did not survive, nobody would have the heart to ask for money. The family could not be expected to have the willingness to pay. It was a poignant moment. Before all the moral issues were resolved within me, I felt that implementing the policy we followed with regard to other charters was the only way forward: advance payment. This conflict between heart and mind would persist. I called up Jayanth and asked him to take off at sunrise.

  In India, then as now, there is no dedicated air ambulance service. All developed countries, even small ones, deploy customized and dedicated helicopters, planes, and ground ambulances for medical emergencies. The operation is end-to-end. A team, or several teams, of doctors, auxiliary medical staff, pilots, ground staff, biomedical engineering experts, and aviation authorities coordinate their efforts to enable speedy evacuation.

  They stretch every sinew to save the patient, with stretchers fitted with ventilators and oxygen cylinders to provide medical care on the way to hospital. Specially trained evacuation units are assigned to these rescue missions. Doctors and nurses at hospitals are trained and equipped to take over immediately once the patient arrives.

  The call from Dr Venkataramana had come even as I had been toying with the idea of specialized evacuation in India. Apart from infrastructural issues, it occurred to me, the major problem was people couldn’t afford to pay huge sums on their own. There is an insurance cover for hospitalization and surgery but there is no insurance i
nstrument that covers aerial evacuation of an injured patient. In developed countries insurance companies have evolved successful health insurance policies that encompass medical evacuation. In Europe and the US they sell premium policies that include medical evacuation. The policy buyer pays an annual $200 or $300 that entitles him/her medical coverage worth $5000. Medical evacuation is mobilized when a patient calls emergency, and the hospital and the helicopter service claim the costs from insurers.

  Insurance companies could play a similar role in India. They need to undertake an actuarial audit of aerial medical evacuation and work out an affordable mass premium. An evacuation mission could cost anything between a lakh and ten lakh rupees, beyond the reach of most people. It is ironical that a patient who is covered for hospital expenses, is unable to reach the hospital. In a sense, insurance companies faced a catch-22 situation. If they offer coverage at a high premium, very few would opt for it; with a low premium they would have to spend a lot of money developing the business, and until the business is established their payout can be very high. This catch has been resolved in some countries, including New Zealand, where the government and the Red Cross buffer the initial phase. Once on rail, the model sustains itself. When more insurance companies offer coverage, more helicopter companies will offer medical emergency evacuation services. Together they will be able to put in place a much needed aspect of infrastructure.

  Dr Venkataramana’s call was our first for medical evacuation. As we were not a dedicated air ambulance service, we had to modify the helicopter to install basic rescue gear. It took our engineer just 20 minutes to remove the seats and make space for two stretchers in our six-seater passenger helicopter. The stretchers were fitted one above the other, bunker style. Three additional people could accompany the accident victims, possibly a doctor, a nurse, and a paramedic.