Sunday, March 27, 2011

Come, fly with me, lets fly, lets fly away - actually, really really don't

Of all the things going wrong in India right now, it is a scandal that does not affect the majority of her 1.18 billion citizens that has found its way into headlines around the world.  

Source: Carlos Ramos

It all began when 38 year old pilot, Captain Parminder Kaur Gulati damaged the nose wheel of low cost carrier Indigo's Airbus A-320 in a flawed landing on January 11 in Goa.  Investigations revealed this wasn't the first time she had messed up a landing and it all made sense when her flying credentials were discovered to be fraudulent.  Gulati's arrest on March 8 was quickly followed by the arrest of Air India's veteran pilot J.K. Verma and the suspension of three SpiceJet pilots, including a 24 year old daughter of a Directorate General Civil Aviation (North) official. Today, with the arrest of Pradeep Kumar, a DGCA official complicit in the racket, police believe they have "smashed" the gang, while chasing four members still absconding.  Stay tuned.  This scandal will go on for a while in the Indian media.  Everybody who's anybody but not somebody, flies commercial.  The nobodies have their trains and buses.

This is not looking like a good year for India's tourism and aviation industry, already smarting from the tax torpedoes in the 2011 Union Budget.  So maybe, you might consider, just as soon as the dust settles, if you could use some exotic booze, ...well, there's a bar in far Bombay.

Take that, Shiv Sena.

2 comments:

rachit narang said...

It's all about Nepotism and whether your kin has got that long hand - a 'Jack', the common parlance. My cousin is a professional pilot and is managing his Dad's business because he had lost hope on getting a job in India. He says 'pehle jugaad waalo ka to hojaye tab hum normal log bhi ban jayenge'

Pundit Commentator said...

And so it goes...although, one hopes for improvement now that 3 DGCA officials have been busted. What does your cousin think now?

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