Indian Pilots Are Dying Due to Covid-19 Who CaresnBhawana Aggarwal nMBA IIM Manager FinTech AirCrews Aviation Pvt. Ltd.

Indian Pilots Are Dying Due to Covid-19 Who Cares ?

Bhawana Aggarwal

https://bit.ly/2T5SfOl

COVID-19 Journey of India:

Global pandemic hits India on 27th January, 2020 for the first time. A 20 years old female in kerala found Covid-19 positive, with a one-day history of dry cough and sore throat. There was no history of fever, rhinitis or shortness of breath. After this incident the government of India started using safety measures on international airports. On 22nd March, 2020 the government of India announced to suspend all the international flights and finally on 24th March, 2020 the honorable prime minister of India Mr. Narendra Modi announced a nationwide lockdown, which resulted in the proper shutdown of the travel industry.  Infect, not only the travel industry, if we are trying to look at the bigger picture we found almost every industry destroyed drastically because of this global pandemic. Many citizens of the country who depend on their regular income or day to day income are able to survive only after receiving government’s financial support. In other words, we can say that the whole country suffers a huge financial loss.

If we talk about the structure of lockdown in India, lockdowns apply in four phases, but on 1st June, 2020 it was observed that the situation is finally under control and there is no need for further lockdown in the country. 

But soon during April 2021 we observed the second wave of COVID-19 which is more dangerous than earlier, the Government found that around three lakhs cases are reported everyday. Resultant on 19th April, 2021 the government of India forced to announce the lockdown again.

This Graph shows the numbers of cases of Covid-19 in India

This all results in the proper shutdown of the travel and tourism industry. We cannot even imagine how much mental pressure is faced by the employees and workers working under this industry. Either they lose their jobs or face a huge salary cut. 

About Aviation Industry:

The Aviation sector in India currently contributes $72 bn to GDP. India has 464 airports and airstrips, of which 125 airports are owned by the Airport Authority of India (AAI). These 125 AAI airports manage close to 78% of domestic passenger traffic and 22% of international passenger traffic..

Passenger traffic in India stood at 316.51 mn during April 2018 - Feb 2019. Out of which domestic passenger traffic stood at 252.92 mn while international traffic stood at 63.59 mn. The aircraft movement, passenger traffic and freight traffic increased by 4.9%, 4.5% and 3.1% respectively in February 2019 viz-a-viz February 2018, across all Indian airports taken together.

However, the share of international cargo traffic is much higher at 68.5% in comparison with 31.5% of domestic cargo traffic.

The airline industry is severely affected by the restrictions, not only because of the formal travel bans but also because of voluntary restrictions, such as replacing business trips with online meetings on zoom and other platforms. For example: the largest German airline Lufthansa, lost 1 million euros per hour in April as per its financials.

It was observed during the pandemic that around 60% of tourists arrive at their destination by air and the stop in air traffic has created a massive negative effect on that industry as well. Over $631 billion in reduced GDP benefits from air travel-related tourism will be matched with 26.4 million jobs lost. But tourism in a wider sense is also very hard-hit, with analysis suggesting the pandemic could translate into a drop of 850 million to 1.1 billion international tourists and a loss of $910 billion to $1.2 trillion in export revenues from tourism, putting 100 to 120 million direct tourism jobs at risk.

Condition of  Indian Pilots:

According to analysis, around 5 million jobs in aviation may be lost by the beginning of next year, a 43% reduction from pre-covid levels. After expanding those effects across all the jobs aviation would normally support, 46 million jobs are at risk. These jobs roles also include highly skilled aviation roles, the wider tourism jobs impacted by the lack of air travel and employment throughout the supply chain in construction, catering supplies, professional services and all the other things required to run a global transport system.

These employees already faced many mental problems before the pandemic such as depression, anxiety, fatigue, and sleep problems more than the normal population. This is because of many reasons such as night work, a very early start of work, long flying hours, long time shifts, and impairment of the biorhythm. But if we consider the pandemic it was found that their mental health effects too much. Earlier problems of depression, anxiety, fatigue, and sleep problems increased with this pandemic. Considering the current situations many of them also face financial problems and harsh conditions. Even many of them died during this pandemic. Many of them are very legendary. Let's memories what India lose during this time:

An Air India Pilot who retired from the airline about a month back passed away due to COVID-19. His demise has raised concern within the airline as a significant number of pilots and cabin crew staff are grappling with coronavirus.  

In the case of GoAir a senior pilot named Captain Ramandeep Bhatti also died due to Covod-19. It was also in the news that their many staff members are also affected by Coronavirus.

Under Vistara Airlines two on duty pilots found Corona positive; they immediately found all the persons who had any kind of direct and indirect physical contact with those two pilots and asked them to keep themselves home quarantined.

When we look at the recent span we found that pilot are died not only because of COVID-19 but also because of many reasons such as:

One Air India pilot died because of Flight 1344 which was scheduled for international flight on 7 August 2020 from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to Kozhikode, India, landing at Calicut International Airport. The flight was part of the Vande Bharat Mission to repatriate Indian nationals stranded due to the COVID-19 pandemic. When the pilots tried to land, the plane was skidded off the end of the tabletop runway and slid down a 9–10.5 m (30–35 ft) slope, killing 19 passengers and both pilots. 

After knowing all these facts the questions in our mind are:

Who is responsible for these deaths?

Who cares about these deaths?

But we all have no answer to all these questions. Some of us try to blame our government or some of us try to blame the securities and safety measures at airports. Even many of us try to blame other countries for spreading this virus in the whole world. But no one has a proper answer to this question.

Bhawana Aggarwal [MBA IIM-s]

Manager FinTech

AirCrews Aviation Pvt. Ltd.

Bhawana@Air-Aviator.com

https://bhawanaaggarwal.vcardinfo.com

मुंबई:एयर इंडिया ने अपने दो कर्मचारियों को खो दिया, वरिष्ठ कमांडर कैप्टन अमितेश प्रसाद, जिन्हें इस महीने की शुरुआत में कोविड के साथ अस्पताल में भर्ती कराया गया था और कोलकाता के विमान रखरखाव इंजीनियर जॉनसन तिर्की, दोनों का रविवार सुबह निधन हो गया।

हालांकि एयर इंडिया के पायलटों और कर्मचारियों ने पिछले साल लॉकडाउन के माध्यम से सही काम किया 

और अगले महीनों में ऐसा करना जारी रखा, दूसरे देशों में फंसे भारतीयों को लाने के लिए वंदे भारत मिशन की उड़ानों का संचालन किया, कर्मचारियों को कोविड टीकाकरण की प्राथमिकता सूची में नहीं रखा गया। 

फ्रंट लाइन वर्कर होने के बावजूद, कई पायलट, केबिन क्रू, इंजीनियर और अन्य ग्राउंड स्टाफ को अभी भी कोविड के लिए टीका लगाया जाना है, यहां तक ​​कि वे हवाई अड्डों पर अपने दैनिक कर्तव्यों के बारे में भी जाते हैं।

बोइंग 777 विमान के कमांडर 57 वर्षीय मुंबई के कैप्टन प्रसाद ने के। जे। सोमैया अस्पताल, सायन में सुबह 1.30 बजे अंतिम सांस ली, एक संदेश जो एयर इंडिया पायलट समूह के बीच प्रसारित किया गया था। 

कैप्टन प्रसाद की पत्नी भी कोविड के साथ अस्पताल में भर्ती हैं।

यहां तक ​​कि जब एयर इंडिया के पायलटों में दुःख और अविश्वास फैल गया, 

तब भी कोविड की मृत्यु के अन्य समाचारों ने कर्मचारी समूहों पर चक्कर लगाए। 

एक संदेश में कहा गया, "कोलकाता से सेवानिवृत्त एयर इंडिया के पायलट, कैप्टन फारूक नवाज अब और नहीं हैं।"