MASS Air Rage

    The relatively new phenomenon of mass air rage has started to hit India's overstretched airline and air traffic scene. Recently a whole plane-load of passengers rushed an A320 cockpit and demanded that the pilot land immediately. They had a point - and the aircraft had a sudden nose-down trim change that caused near heart-attacks on the other side of the cockpit door. The pilot had been hovering over Delhi at endurance speed for an eternity, waiting for a slot to open up. This pressure-cooker situation is being seen so often now, both on the ground and in the air, that one major airline has produced an internal security report on the deteriorating situation. Indian newspaper reports have featured photos of angry passengers beating up on pilots after landing. One wonders how long before an Indian pilot's contract will include a bodyguard clause.
    The Indian infrastructure planning in particular seems to have started and ended with pilots and planes. ATC and airports are poor second cousins when it comes to expenditure. There's every indication that it will all end in tears as the Indian system will grind to a virtual standstill, burdened by its own inability to keep the airline travel conveyor belt running. Brazil demonstrated how easily that crump could come in late 2006, following on from the GOL 737 and Legacy collision. Up until that happened and until the follow-on industrial action shut down the industry for days at a time, all the Brazilian airline industry execs were seeing everything in their aerial garden as rosy.