A-I crash: Govt seeks law banning non-conforming structures near airports

By Mihir Mishra

 

India plans to clamp down on structures near airports that don’t comply with height regulation, as the governments seeks to tighten aviation safety in the wake of an airliner crash last week that ranks as the country’s worst in several decades. 

The government is drafting a law that would allow the demolition of buildings near airfields that don’t meet vertical limits, which isn’t the case now. The bill will be open for public feedback for three weeks, after which the responses will be analyzed and then drafted into a law.

 

The proposal seeks to empower India’s aviation regulator to examine complaints of unlawful construction and order owners to trim trees or reduce the height of a non-conforming building within 60 days. Failure to respond could lead to an actual demolition of the building, according to the draft.

 

India is reeling from a deadly crash involving a Boeing Co. 787 airliner that smashed into densely populated part of Ahmedabad on June 12. The accident killed all but one of the 242 occupants on the plane and at least 30 on the ground after the London-bound airliner came down in an urban district just off the runway.

 

The cause of the crash isn’t known — and a collision with a building or other structure on the ground hasn’t been identified as a possible reason. Experts have paid particular attention to the apparent lack of lift for the plane that led the jet to sink back to the ground just seconds after takeoff.

 

Some analysts cautioned that while many airports around the country have buildings nearby that violate height norms, following through with an actual demolition will be hard.

 

“While it’s easy to make rules, it will be next to impossible to implement them,” given the scale of non-conforming structures, said Mark Martin, founder and CEO at Martin Consulting, an aviation advisory firm.

 

Late last year, an airliner operated by Jeju Air Co. slammed into a barrier at end of a runway at Muan International Airport in South Korea. That accident, which killed 179 people on board the Boeing 737, also led to a review of structures in vicinity of runways. 

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