Poor monitoring and a lack of infrastructure jeopardise flier safety

On Sunday, a helicopter operated by Aryan Aviation took off at around 5.20 am from Kedarnath in Uttarakhand. It was scheduled to land in around 15 minutes at Guptkashi, a little over 20 km away. It crashed en route, killing all seven on board, including a two-year-old child.

It was the fifth helicopter crash in the state in a span of just six weeks between May and June. Three of these choppers were flying to or from the Kedarnath shrine in Rudraprayag district, one of four destinations on the Char Dham pilgrimage circuit.

According to a government press release, “preliminary indications” pointed to the fact that the chopper was flown “despite poor visibility and extensive clouding at the valley entry area”.

Later that day, Uttarakhand police registered a first information report with respect to the incident, accusing two managers of Aryan Aviation of culpable homicide because the chopper had taken off around 50 minutes before the departure time allotted to it.

In addition to the crashes, there have been near misses. Early in June, a helicopter developed a technical issue after taking off from Barasu for Kedarnath, and the pilot made an emergency landing on a nearby highway, thus saving the lives of those on board.

The factors that have made the Kedarnath route vulnerable to such accidents include a lack of air traffic monitoring systems and the absence of weather stations, experts said. They contended that operators were far too focused on ensuring a high frequency of flights and turning profits, at the cost of safety.

“In the military, flight safety is a culture,” said Captain Sanjay Chakravarthy, a retired military aviator who has flown on the Kedarnath route for five years. He explained that such a culture is developed only when every entity involved in a field is encouraged to follow safety procedures.

By contrast, he said, during the Char Dham season, when the region sees an influx of customers, “the culture is of revenue”, in which operators focus on flying as many hours as possible. The season is between May and June, with a break for the monsoon, picking up again in September and October.

Given that the area has “sensitive valleys” and unpredictable weather, Chakravarthy added, such an approach creates congestion in the air and increases the risks of accidents.

In a meeting on Sunday, Uttarakhand’s chief minister, Pushkar Singh Dhami, noted that “punitive action” would be taken once the government had identified those who were responsible for the latest crash.

“Protecting the lives of the common people is the priority of the state government,” he said.

Scroll emailed aviation authorities and Aryan Aviation, seeking responses to criticisms about the functioning of helicopter services in the region. This story will be updated if they respond.

No live weather updates

The Kedarnath helipad is situated at around 11,000 feet above mean sea level, and is less than a kilometre from the Kedarnath shrine. A helicopter round trip from one of the nearby takeoff points costs around Rs 6,600 per person.

The Uttarakhand Civil Aviation Development Authority awards tenders to companies through a bidding process. This year, nine private operators were awarded contracts to fly pilgrims in helicopters to Kedarnath from Guptkashi, Sirsi and Phata.

While the UCADA has a helipad at Kedarnath for choppers to land on, at the take-off sites, each operator flies out of their individual helipads. According to some estimates, each day, between sunrise and sunset when the services run, around 250 helicopters take flight on the Kedarnath route.

Weather changes can occur rapidly at the altitudes at which these choppers fly. In October 2022, an Aryan Aviation chopper crashed along the same route, killing all seven on board. An Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau report found that the probable cause was “error of judgment” on the part of the crew “to correctly assess deteriorating weather situation for a safe take-off and flight”.

The risk associated with inclement weather is exacerbated by the fact that there are no localised weather stations at Kedarnath to provide accurate weather readings to pilots. The closest such data is gathered by the Indian Meteorological Department office in Dehradun around 250 km away.

But “there is a considerable difference in weather in the valley to that of Dehradun”, the investigation report of the 2022 crash stated.

Another pilot, who flew in Uttarakhand for a decade, noted that the only airport in the state that had a weather station was Dehradun’s Jolly Grant Airport. “But there needs to be one at Kedarnath too because there is no forecasting that end,” said the pilot, who requested anonymity.

In the absence of such data, pilots gather information about weather conditions by communicating with their staff at the destination sites. Based on these communications, pilots independently decide whether to take off.

The 2022 investigation report underlined the problem of relying solely on pilots to take decisions about weather. It stated, “with frequent change in weather conditions in the valley this procedure of total dependency on pilots’ perception cannot be relied upon every time”.

After the latest accident, two more helicopters were found to have flown under unsuitable weather conditions. The licences of both pilots have been suspended for six months.

No one to control air traffic

The absence of an air traffic control centre at Kedarnath was an equally serious problem, experts noted.

Currently, operators follow government guidelines and standard operating procedures approved by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. Under these guidelines, the UCADA assigns time slots through the day for operators to fly their craft.

The second pilot explain that before each take-off from a helipad, operators obtain a formal clearance – but this clearance is issued by the air traffic control centre in the Dehradun airport. Without local air traffic control, the 2022 report noted, operations in the valley are in an “uncontrolled environment”.

Locally, Chakravarty explained, “while taking off, the pilots just coordinate amongst each other through radiotelephony”.

After the recent accidents, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation sought to address the problem of excessive air traffic on the route by reducing the number of flights by half, from around 300 per day to around 150.

But, the second pilot noted that rather than take one-off policy decisions, it would be far more beneficial in the long-term if the government set up an air traffic control centre in Kedarnath. If such a centre did operate here, it would not have allowed “these many helicopters flying every day” through the season, he said.

The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau also made the same recommendation in its reports on the 2022 accident, and another in 2023. In the latter, it recommended that the DGCA “analyse the feasibility of establishing an Air Traffic Control tower at Kedarnath Helipad or its nearby places to regulate the heavy traffic it handles during season every year”.

Each operator to its own

The 2022 investigation also raised concerns about the lack of a single authority to take responsibility for flight operations on the Kedarnath route.

While the Kedarnath helipad is provided by the UCADA, its responsibility ends there. The 2022 report noted that private operators bear all other responsibilities, such as hiring and managing personnel, and procuring and installing safety or firefighting equipment.

The UCADA has not published detailed tender documents for this year on its website, but this problem is reflected in a 2018 document for choppers to fly between Kedarnath shrine and Hemkund Sahib.

It stated that the authority “shall not be liable for what-so-ever consequences arising out of any accident, incident, mishap, or any event relating to the operation of the helicopter services of the Operator, who shall be solely and exclusively liable for any injury, damage or liability of any kind arising directly or indirectly out of its operations”.

Such provisions are “not conducive for safe operations”, the 2022 investigation suggested, since each operator would only focus on and take responsibility for their own operations.

It added that “it is not clear as to who is the overall in-charge of the operations” at the helipad and that there was “no clarity regarding who is responsible for safe conduct of flights”.

In a meeting on Sunday, Chief Minister Dhami announced that a common command and cooperation centre would be established “for better coordination and safe operations”, which would include officials of the DGCA, UCADA, disaster management authorities, and helicopter operator companies.

Until such a centre is established, meanwhile, experts worry that those who fly the route are not safe. “If it’s about the revenue,” Chakravarty said, “I would suggest that operators should increase their charges, if it means a safer flight for the public.”

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