It’s the same story every winter. As fog descends on airfields in the northern parts of India causing large scale disruption in air services and hardship to passengers, airlines plead their helplessness.

It’s not as if airlines are taken by surprise by the fog. This is a phenomenon they face every year. Yet, there is complete lack of preparedness to deal with the situation. That is what is most infuriating, as far as passengers are concerned. Take the Delhi airport, for example. The airport is fitted with a category III instrument landing system that allows aircraft to land even at a visibility range of 50 metres. However, in order to use this facility, the aircraft must have the necessary instruments and more important, the pilot should be trained to use it. But every winter, airlines have some excuse for not having adequate number of pilots trained to use the instrument.

Given the fact that the airlines have to fly in poor visibility conditions in Delhi for at least three months of the year (December, January and February) one would expect the regulator, the directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA), to make this a pre-requisite for granting licences to airlines to fly. Instead, more and more airlines are being allowed to operate in the Indian skies, without such a conditionality. A regulator’s job is to protect the interests of consumers. Obviously, in the civil aviation sector, this has not been the priority. Or else, airlines that did not have adequately trained pilots would have been grounded much before fog descended on the capital city of Delhi.

Airlines are now quoting figures on how the number of pilots trained to operate CAT III and II have increased this year, compared to last year. That is no consolation to passengers. What they want is to fly safely and on time during the winter months and whatever it takes to make this happen must be done — be it the training of pilots or upgradation of aircraft instruments or for that matter, provision of state-of-the-art landing instruments at all airports that are enveloped by fog in winter months. So every pilot in every airline should be trained to take off and land in poor visibility of 50 mtrs. Or else, the airline’s operations should be suspended in winter.

If the DGCA fails to enforce this, it should take responsibility, along with the airlines for the deficient service. I don’t see why passengers should take this kind of shoddy service and suffer any longer. In fact, they must now haul up not just the airlines, but also the regulator and the civil aviation ministry for the mess at the airports and demand heavy punitive damages.