Simply Fly

by Capt G R Gopinath

  In the eventual count, pilots are only human, with foibles just like the rest of us. They are equally prone to placing excessive faith in their ability and judgment. Undue pressure exerted by a zealous politician or the urge to return home after a long break—sufficient to lead to an error of judgment which could end up in tragedy.

  One of our finest pilots, Capt. G.V. Menon had previously flown in the army extensively, especially in the mountains of Kashmir and Ladakh. He was indefatigable and possessed an inexhaustible store of energy. He was a perfectionist in his line. Given that many of us once belonged to the army, we continued the tradition of socializing at a personal level. We visited one another’s homes; got acquainted with the families. Many people in the company said we were too much like a defence organization.

  Towards the turn of the 1990s, about eight or nine years ago, many evangelical organizations had begun hiring our helicopters to fly to the remote, tribal belts of Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, and West Bengal. They went there to preach the gospel, flying to a particular location and camping there, and preaching among the tribals and winning new converts to Christianity. The pilot stayed back in a small house for the next seven–eight days. It was apparent, from what my pilots told me, that the tribal populations, who are nature worshippers, were the principle targets of conversion. The attacks on churches in recent times are a reaction to the proselytization that began almost a decade ago. Such attacks create a chasm in society and do nothing to address the real underlying issues. Civic bodies and NGOs must examine the problem at its roots. They must realize that you cannot expect people not to convert when they are positioned in the lowest scale within their social milieu, are poor, and see no opportunities to make a decent living. Those who wish to remedy the situation must work with these communities to provide health-care, sanitation, education, and jobs. They must help these people find their voice and offer them the vehicles for expression in our democratic set-up, rather than focusing on preventing conversions.

  One or two such evangelical groups frequently hired our helicopters to travel in the coastal areas in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa. On one occasion, one of these hired three helicopters on a fortnight’s assignment. Three pilots, including Capt. Menon, formed part of the crew. Somewhere in the middle of these proselytizing and conversion missions, the organizers invited the then Lok Sabha speaker G.M.C. Balayogi, who belonged to that region, to attend a function which the evangelists had organized and be the chief guest. For the speaker too it made political sense because the meeting would strengthen his political bonds with the people.

  Balayogi had a tight schedule. He had to be in Delhi to conduct the Lok Sabha session before ten the following morning. He would have to take an overnight train from Ongole, deep in Andhra Pradesh, to Hyderabad that evening and fly to Delhi the next morning. Balayogi was apprehensive that he might miss the connecting train and declined the invitation.

  As the evangelists had three helicopters at their disposal, they requested Balayogi to stay back and attend their function and promised to fly him to Hyderabad in our helicopter in time for his flight to Delhi. The speaker agreed.

  The evangelists asked Capt. Menon to fly to Hyderabad. Capt. Menon took off at six in the morning with Balayogi on board. It was a winter morning and there was a thick blanket of fog. Capt. Menon was probably under tremendous pressure from the evangelists and Balayogi to take off that morning, to enable the speaker to catch the Delhi flight in time.

  One thought is a cause of perpetual concern to me. We are in the business of flying people and have to do what it takes to ensure that no accidents occur and no lives are lost. This is a fear I forever live with.

  I was in Hong Kong at that time, having travelled to Macau on business and was in the middle of a meeting when I was called out: somebody from back home wanted to talk to me urgently. I was informed by our office in Bengaluru that one of our helicopters had been involved in a fatal crash, and that pilot Capt. Menon and speaker Balayogi had both died in the course of it. The news numbed me.

  I cut short my trip and rushed back. Capt. Menon who was around forty years old at the time, had twenty years of flying experience. He had done duty in the Siachen glacier, the highest operational altitude anywhere in the world, and this under enemy sniper fire. He had negotiated the harshest weather conditions–rain and sleet, snow and fog. He had brought people and material to safety, flying over very inhospitable terrain among jagged peaks and had handled innumerable emergencies. That something like this could happen to someone of his spirit, caliber, and experience was totally unbelievable.

  The report submitted by investigators suggests that he had taken off early, and soon thereafter found himself in the middle of dense fog. Most chartered helicopters around the world are flown visually, and are not equipped with an auto pilot and horizon stabilizer available to fixed-wing aircraft or specially equipped helicopters. When visibility drops in foggy weather, the pilot suffers severe disorientation and cannot easily determine his reference to the ground. In a fog, the pilot flies lower and lower till he can see better, bearing in mind all the while that he has to maintain a safe distance above ground. He can however fly only as low as his maps allow, i.e., above hilltops, high buildings, power lines, and the like. Over normal terrain, this level is 150 to 300 metres.

  Capt. Menon had consulted his maps and found paddy-fields in the region over which he was flying at the time. As fate would have it, the paddy-fields had recently been converted into aqua-farms. These changes had not been made to the maps that were in circulation which the pilot had with him. A thick fog had settled over the surface of the aqua-farms. Hoping that the fog had a restricted spread, the pilot flew into it but was sucked into it. There was fog above, in front, and beneath. Eyewitnesses quoted in the report, said the pilot began descending for an emergency landing. This was because he hoped to be landing on a paddy-field which was inconvenient but not life-threatening. If indeed there had been the paddy- fields indicated in the maps, the pilot’s decision would have been perfectly sound. That would have been the correct action to take at that moment.

  When however he touched ground the pilot must have realized that the helicopter had landed on shallow aqua-pond water. Unaware of what kind of waterbody it was, whether a marsh or pond, the pilot must have panicked and pushed the throttle to the maximum for take-off. The tail rotor thus hit the surface of the water while in full throttle. The helicopter veered out of control and hit a coconut tree on the bund. There were three people on board, Capt. Menon, Balayogi, and his guard, none of whom survived the crash, all dying at the site.

  We went to the scene of the accident and brought home the pilot’s mortal remains. Capt. Menon was cremated in his home town. It was heart-wrenching. He had a wife and two young children. We took care of the family and gave compensation and insurance money. His wife joined our company. His son is now training to be a pilot in the US with Deccan’s financial support and will soon join the company.

  Not long afterwards, there was a call from a lady who gave her name as Beulah Bonugli. She was from South Africa and wanted to know whether I offered helicopters for sightseeing and charters. I said we did. She was surprised. ‘Oh, I wish I had known. My tour operator never told me such service was available in India. Had I known, we would have hired your helicopter.’

  As Beulah Bonugli was speaking, the thought recurred that advertising at reasonable cost remained our biggest challenge. How could you inform people around the world that a helicopter service was available? We often lose business as so many people are still not aware that we exist.

  Vijay Amritraj, star of Indian tennis, is now on the board of directors of Deccan. At our first meeting, when I told Vijay that I ran a helicopter service, he was surprised that helicopters were available in India for private use. He told me a story about Bjorn Borg, considered one of the all-time greats of world tennis. Vijay showed Borg around during his visit to India the year before. Borg wanted to see the Taj Mahal. The first thing Borg ha
d asked Vijay was whether they could hire a helicopter for the visit. Vijay made enquiries but the travel agents were not able to help him. They hired a taxi and drove to Agra. The journey took six hours one way and ruined the pleasure of seeing the Taj Mahal. Had Borg had more time, which a helicopter ride would have enabled, he could have seen two other wonders in addition, Fatehpur Sikri and Agra Fort.

  I do not let go of a caller simply by providing information on rates and terms of hire. I will not put the receiver down until I know more about the caller. I am keen to know the purpose of their call, what they proposed to do with the helicopter, and itineraries, if any have been planned. I also wish to know how they obtained our contact information. It turned out that Beulah Bonugli was on a fifteen-day trip to India. On the last leg of her tour, she and her husband had taken a train from Varanasi to Delhi. Somewhere along the way, they dozed off. When they woke up they found all their bags missing, including their passports and credit cards.

  At the time of the call, Beulah Bonugli was staying in a Mumbai hotel, waiting for new passports, visas, and credit cards. She had seen the Deccan advertisement in the pages of Mumbai this Fortnight. She was in India for two more days. Was there something near Mumbai where they could go sightseeing? I suggested a half-day aerial sightseeing tour of Mumbai and a day trip to the caves of Ajanta and Ellora. I explained to her that the architecture of the painstakingly rock-hewn 2500-year old Buddhist caves would undoubtedly leave her spellbound and that she would not have seen their parallel anywhere in the world. She was happy with the fare and the deal.

  We continued to talk. She asked all of a sudden, ‘Why don’t you have aeroplanes?’ I replied, ‘I am in the final stages of working out a deal. We should be inducting planes in the course of the next three or four months.’ We had ten helicopters by then and were still small in corporate terms but had become the largest helicopter charter company in India. We were becoming well known among a niche clientele.

  She asked me what plane I was planning to buy. ‘A King Air–B200,’ I replied. ‘Why a King Air? Why not a Pilatus?’ she responded. I had seen a Pilatus at an air show in Australia and knew something about it. The Pilatus was widely acknowledged as a good aircraft with greater seating capacity and longer range than the King Air which had become a standard warhorse for commercial charter operations. Pilatus had great avionics, a pressurized cabin, and flew at an altitude of around 9000 metres. The only cause for reluctance among operators was that it had a single engine and was, therefore, not allowed for commercial operations in India.

  The aviation rules for aircraft meant for private use are a little less stringent than for commercial charters. They are far more meticulously applied when it comes to scheduled airlines because of concerns for passenger safety.

  Beulah Bonugli knew a lot about the Pilatus. I asked, ‘Beulah Bonugli, how do you know so much about the Pilatus?’ What she told me in reply left me dumbfounded. She owned nine Pilatus aircrafts! And also owned a small bank in South Africa; she also ran a company which funded hire-purchase of white goods. It was of course not easy for me to believe her. She sensed it and said, ‘Believe me, Captain! I’m serious. I think you should get a Pilatus. Are you sceptical about what I am saying simply because it comes from a woman?’

  I recovered quickly and was willing to believe her, but had my doubts about the Pilatus’s suitability for India and whether the DGCA would approve its use for commercial charters. According to Beulah Bonugli, the Pilatus was being extensively used in South Africa. She had leased aircrafts to Australia, Canada, and Kenya. ‘Take my word for it! The aircraft is flawless. Why don’t you come down to South Africa and see it for yourself?’

  Without a moment’s hesitation I said, ‘Alright! I’ll visit your place next week. Please send me a formal invitation.’ That telephone conversation with Beulah Bonugli was to be a turning point for Deccan Aviation. I asked Vidya Babu to pack his bags. We were taking off for South Africa to check out the legendary Pilatus.

  Vidya Babu, our chief engineer, and I flew to South Africa. My idea of Africa was shaped largely by Hatari and Tarzan, movies I had watched in childhood, and Born Free, which I had watched later. In those films small aircrafts flew in and out of airstrips in the middle of nowhere. I saw those aircraft as playing a major role in promoting tourism in India. Small aircrafts are convenient, eco-friendly and economical. All they require is a landing strip.

  The American FAA, the British Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), and the European JAR had certified the new Pilatus which incorporated new technology and advanced safety standards. The US agency, known for its extremely stringent certification procedures, had allowed the new Pilatus for use in commercial charter operations. That alone, I realized, would help me push the case with the DGCA in India.

  Beulah Bonugli had sent her representatives to receive us. She was an extraordinary woman. Her early life was a tough one but she overcame great odds to succeed. She looked young and attractive (I later learnt that she was sixty and a proud grandmother).

  Bonugli had deployed four aircrafts, the balance belonging to other operators. I wanted to evaluate the Pilatus from a business perspective. Some still operated the vintage yet a modern, unpressurized Cessna Grand Caravan but Pilatus was the prime mode of transport between the game reserves. Beulah Bonugli suggested we begin by visiting the famous game parks.

  We, therefore, boarded an aircraft. There were six of us: the pilot, Vidya Babu, Beulah Bonugli, her son and daughter, and I. The Kruger National Park was our first halt and Khagakama National Park our next. The Kruger, one of the largest on the continent, is in a fold deep within Africa. Kruger has the big five: the lion, rhino, elephant, giraffe, and the hippo. I sat next to the pilot and had a magnificent view of jungle and bush. The landscape was marked by grassy aircraft-landing strips every few miles. Aircraft charter operators here had tied-up with resorts and lodges, as I had in India on a much smaller scale. The tourist infrastructure, of aircraft and lodges, was enormous and catered to millions of tourists. The resorts were at the periphery of game reserves. Game reserves were a continuous unfenced expanse of grassland and forest. The national reserves were interspersed with large private game reserves. Although attending to such large numbers of tourists, the resorts kept the habitats clean, safe, and unpolluted for wildlife, and exemplifyng of how well-informed tourism, moderated by very heavy penalties for breach of game park regulations, can play a major part in preserving wildlife and natural habitats.

  I thought about India and how we were choking tourism initiatives. Good tourism requires all those involved to observe the rules of the game. There is an ecosystem that begins in the country of origin of the prospective traveller. It comprises advertising and publicity, a traveller-friendly visa issuance system, reliable and easy ticket and travel arrangements, good transport, clean lodgings, and clean water and food. India lacks in one or more areas of the tourism ecosystem and it cuts both ways: there are no good resorts because there are no tourists; and there are no tourists because there are no good resorts. And the biggest deterrent—our places of tourist attraction are drowning in garbage and filth. We have high-end tourists and back packers. The high-end stay in five star hotels. The back packers pay two dollars and stay in basic shacks with a charpoy (cot) and a common toilet—a common sight in Goa and Hampi and such other places. The large overseas middleclass which is the mainstay of tourism, skip India. Could the Pilatus, I mused, propel Indian tourism as it did for Africa?

  The grass strip at Kruger had a windsock for direction and there was no terminal building, not even a toilet. The fence erected to keep out wild animals was not effective. The more lissome among them like deer and zebras jumped over or breached it. The pilot said this was a common occurrence and did a well-practised low pass over the animals. It worked like magic, scattering the animals and leaving the landing strip clear.

  There were three aprons (aircraft parking areas) on the strip. The pilot tethered the Pilatus to one of the stays on an
apron like one would a cow to a stone mooring. He covered the aircraft Perspex with a tarpaulin shield. We got into a waiting jeep and drove off to the resort 9 kilometres away. The African resorts are very well managed; Indian tourism should take a leaf out of their book. They have almost entirely thatched roofs, beautifully done-up rooms, restaurants, and lounges under the thatch. All resorts harness traditional local expertise to build their structures.

  We set off at five in the morning for the African safari. We saw giraffes, gazelles, elephants, and leopards. The jungle terrain in Africa differs from that in India. In India we have thick forests; the South African and Kenyan jungles comprise miles of grassland, the spectacular savannahs, which have virtually no trees apart from the occasional shrub and trees with a wide canopy but light foliage like the baobab and acacia. The big five in Africa prey on herbivores like zebras, various kinds of deer and gazelle. It is a revelation—realizing that grass plays perhaps the most important role in the food chain. The grassland extends northwards from South Africa right up to Kenya and Tanzania. The African forests are never littered with garbage and plastic like in most Indian forest trails.

  At nine, we stopped for breakfast amidst surroundings that were as picturesque as could be wished, near a lake. One could watch from a raised platform the hippos splashing about and sporting in the water. We were told that more people die in Africa from being trampled or attacked by hippos than by lions. It was therefore a wise policy to keep safe distance. The breakfast featured a lavish smorgasbord of sandwiches and bacon and eggs prepared by local African guides. We throughout had the company of local African tribals who are excellent trackers and know the jungle like the back of their palms.