Sitting At The Airport On A Foggy Morning

A famous poem by Robert Frost inspires the title of this article, but that¡¯s where the similarity ends.

That poem is about a happy horseman stopping in the woods thinking profound thoughts; and this piece is about unhappy fliers sitting at the airport thinking dark thoughts!

Yesterday¡¯s surprise fog in Delhi reminded me of my recent experience.

Unsplash/Representational image

I was travelling in uniform, as a passenger, in another airline, when the flight got delayed because of fog at our destination, Delhi.

My neighbour was a bright young lady with a cute little son. After the son settled into his seat with some game on his mother¡¯s mobile, thankfully with headphones, she turned to me, and in a tone quite like the Bollywood film lawyer, asking the innocent (of course!) hero why he committed the crime, asked me, ¡°Why is the flight late?¡±

Trying to look as nonchalant as possible, I smiled and replied, ¡°Madam, I don¡¯t know.¡±

¡°But you¡¯re a pilot.¡±

¡°In another airline.¡±

¡°And you¡¯ll know the inside information, the trade secrets. Tell me, what do they achieve by delaying flights every winter? To allow you all to sleep a bit more?¡±

BCCL/Representational image

My eyes almost moistened behind my spectacles.

Not because of the unfair accusation, but because of her motherly misconception that any airline, or indeed any employer, would be so kind as to let the employees stay longer in their blankets!

¡°Tell the cabin crew to ask the Captain. He knows the facts,¡± I said.

I knew the truth, of course, and I also knew the half-truth that the Captain was going to dole out, but I could not resist a dig at the rival airline.

Sure, there¡¯s the inevitable fog which descends over Northern India in winters, like a blanket over a lazy employee of a benevolent employer.

To land in that fog, the two pilots must be trained in the Simulator and they need to have practised auto-landings in the aircraft, in good visibility.

All that training requires time and flying experience, hence not every pilot can land in fog.

From the weather data for Delhi, I could see that our Captain wasn¡¯t qualified to land in the current conditions, and hence the delay.

And I knew the Captain wouldn¡¯t announce that in public!

Unsplash/Representational image

When you drive in fog or when the visibility is poor due to rain, you slow down. And if you just can¡¯t see anything ahead, you stop safely on the roadside.

But an airplane cannot stop in the air, nor can it slow down below a certain speed.

You can only go so slowly while cycling. Any slower, and you¡¯ll lose your balance. A similar thing happens in an airplane, and it cannot fly below a certain speed.

But we still must take-off and land. And between the two, a take-off is easier because we¡¯re going away from the ground, into the safe skies.

During landing, we must touchdown at the beginning of the runway, to use the full length to slow down to taxying speeds. Most runways are over 8,000 feet long, but they are only 145 feet wide.

That might seem a lot of width, but at 150 knots (270 kmph) in fog, that¡¯s rather thin!

Fog forces us to carry out the so called ¡®blind¡¯ landings, especially in the mornings during winters.

But we can¡¯t be totally blind. Remember, height is low, speeds are high and the reaction time is precious little.

I have landed many times in fog, and although the aircraft does a great auto-landing, one must be ready to take over manually and start corrective action if something goes wrong.

With 200 trusting passengers on board, we can never compromise on safety.

So, if your flight cannot land in Delhi because of the fog and diverts to Jaipur, you¡¯re delayed by at least 4 hours, anyway.

Might as well depart later and be sure to land.

Better to be an hour late than to be a day late!

The writer is a former fighter pilot of the IAF and is now a commercial airline pilot. He is the author of three novels and many blog posts, available at www.avinashchikte.com