ON THE WINGS OF A PRAYER

The Jetwings magazine, the airlines' inflight glossy, tells me that flying is safer than doing most things in life, be it walking down the road or turning on your hair dryer.

People flying Alliance Air would beg to differ. The pundits and the ministers may argue, but as any frequent flyer on Alliance Air (unfortunates trapped in the feeder routes) would tell you, the airline is all about young pilots, young airhostesses and old aircrafts flying to dead airports and slumbering cities. Those who have to clamber on to one of these flights, joke about how the young crew at Alliance keeps your mind off the old plane while the relatively younger planes of the Indian Airlines keeps your mind off the old crew.

The academic debate about the years that aircraft fly send shivers down my spine. The condition of these deathtraps have little to do with the years in service. Today, the Indian Airlines planes are slowly reaching that point where many of them would go the way of the Alliance Air aircraft -- a patchwork of nuts and bolts with two engines strapped on. Often you get the feel sitting inside one of those ageing Boeing 737s of Alliance that the pilot is desperately thundering down the runway in the hope that a miraculous gust of wind would lift the plane before he runs out of airstrip.

I am no aircraft engineer, but this much I can vouch for: Duct tapes keep much of the innards of the aircraft in place; seats slip back all the way; wings look a patchwork of welding and ingenuous engineering; doors often do not close for reasons beyond engineering comprehension and most of the flights seem to land with thuds that turn the hair grey for even the most seasoned traveller. I am told, again by the informed Jetwings, that a thud-thud landing is often better than a greaser because it enables a better grip on the tarmac and allows faster stopping on short runways. However, I doubt whether the thuds are simply that when we land in Delhi or a Mumbai.

There is a huge dose of luck that carries most of these aircraft. I shall not argue with assorted experts who now, as always, are seeking to confuse the issues by displays of great intellect and knowledge. Yet Alliance Air flies primarily on prayer, the aviation fuel is just incidental.