Daily News Editorial

A disaster averted

 23 August 2016

 

The general advice given to all drivers is that if you are under the influence of liquor, don’t take the wheel. Yet, Driving Under the Influence (DUI) is one of the most common traffic offences worldwide including Sri Lanka. If that is the advice given to drivers, imagine flying a passenger plane fully loaded with passengers for 10-11 hours in an inebriated state. That is simply unthinkable and expressly forbidden by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and all airport authorities. Pilots are generally taught that there should at least be a period of 48 hours from “the bottle to the throttle”.

From time to time, we hear of pilots who try to break this rule or even the much more generous eight-hour rule adopted by certain aviation authorities. In the latest such incident, a SriLankan Airlines pilot was found to have consumed liquor prior to his Airbus A330 flight from Frankfurt to Colombo on August 19. He failed a breathalyzer test at the airport and the flight had to delayed by 15 hours until a replacement chief pilot could be sent from Sri Lanka. Each of the 259 passengers had to be paid compensation of up to 600 euros according to European Union regulations, on top of expenses borne by the airline for food and accommodation.

That is not all. An airline can earn money only when a plane is in the air. A delay of 15 hours for any given aircraft in a fleet affects the entire schedule, including the immediate next flight of the plane in question. Apart from the 259 passengers of this particular flight, hundreds of other passengers in Colombo and elsewhere waiting for connecting flights were affected by the delay. It also gives a very bad name to the airline, as this incident has gained wide publicity around the world, especially in Europe which is one of our biggest tourism markets.

However, there are a few positives that we can glean from this incident. We are told that the rest of the crew including the co-pilots had alerted the Frankfurt airport authorities on the somewhat abnormal behaviour of their Chief Pilot. Their concern for the safety of the passengers and crew must be appreciated. Their action possibly averted a major disaster. This indicates a strong ‘safety culture’ in the airline, now a part of the Oneworld Alliance. The airline also deserves plaudits for suspending the services of the captain in question. While SriLankan is not the only airline which faced this problem in recent times – just last month, two pilots working for Canada’s Air Transat turned up drunk to fly an Airbus A310 from Glasgow to Toronto – all airlines must carry out frequent psychological assessments of their flight crew to nip any behavioural problems in the bud.

This incident could not have come at a worse time for the airline, which is facing a financial nosedive. The rot set in during the previous regime, which appointed a totally unqualified person to helm the airline and whose top figures used the airline more or less as their own personal taxi service. The former President made SriLankan sever ties with its former strategic partner Emirates in 2008 over a personal dispute with its then expatriate CEO. SriLankan had a profitable run under Emirates management, but shorn of that link, the airline has recorded huge losses which total up to US$ 1 billion in just seven years. The new Government now faces the unenviable task of turning the airline from “Red to Black” through a variety of strategies including a wet-lease of several aircraft to Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), cancellation of several Airbus A350 planes ordered by the previous Government (this deal should be investigated separately), termination of several routes which are no longer viable and most important of all, looking for a strategic airline partner. Several top foreign airlines are reported to be interested in forming a partnership with SriLankan to take it through this turbulent period. As if SriLankan’s problems were not enough, the Government is also saddled with the problem of Mihin Lanka, the budget airline established by the former president which is slated to be merged with SriLankan. It does have several high-yielding routes which will be absorbed to the SriLankan network.

The Government has now extended the deadline for Expressions of Interest (EOI) for the reorientation of SriLankan Airlines until August 31 to give more time to interested partners to come forward. Despite the troubles it is facing, SriLankan does have several plus points with Sri Lanka attracting record numbers of tourists. SriLankan is the number one foreign carrier into India and Maldives, it has a fairly young fleet and a strong route network complemented by codeshare agreements with oneworld and other partners, it is well known for good in-flight service and above all, the new management is keen to turn things around. The authorities must tread carefully in selecting a new partner who can take these strengths forward and make SriLankan conquer new heights.