I was sitting in a plane in Mumbai waiting for it to take off for New Delhi when the pilot announced a delay due to congestion at the airport. That in itself was not surprising as it has become a common occurrence. What indeed was surprising was the fact that the air traffic control (ATC) was not willing to be clear about the extent of delay. The plane did take off finally more than an hour late. Given that it was midnight when the plane landed in Delhi, most passengers were justifiably upset. The minister for civil aviation can claim that we are building world-class airports, which is certainly true at least if you look at “hard” infrastructure, but when it comes to “soft” infrastructure and processes, we clearly continue to be pretty obsolete — the ATC cannot even commit to the time of take-off of a scheduled flight with passengers already on board.

><table width='100%' border=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td style='FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 18px; FONT-WEIGHT: bold; COLOR: #0253B7;'><B>Arindam Bhattacharya:</B> Soft infrastructure is the hard part</td></tr><tr><tr><td style='FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 11px; '>If we can put together a world-class airport, why can

Arindam Bhattacharya: Soft infrastructure is the hard part

If we can put together a world-class airport, why cant we fix the soft infrastructure parts like the Air Traffic Control?

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