- Need for airfields to be away from population centres
An Army Aviation King Air 350 Turboprop crashed in the wee hours of Tuesday in Rawalpindi while trying to land, leaving five military personnel and 13 civilians dead. The dead included both pilots, who were lieutenant-colonels, and the three members of the crew. The civilian casualties occurred because the plane ploughed into a suburb of Rawalpindi, which had reached out to the environs of the airfield. As at a number of places, Rawalpindi’s airport is next to the PAF Air base and the Army Aviation’s airfield. To complicate matters, originally placed far outside the city, it is now in the suburbs, and a large population could be hit at any time by a crash. This is the case not just in Rawalpindi, but in every large. And most small, conurbations. Population growth has meant that the many military airfields in the country are now more or less in the middle of large populations.
The need to remove airfields must not be limited to the Army alone. The bulk of military aviation comes from the PAF, while the Navy has an Aviation Arm, while civil aviation involves a large number of airlines, both foreign and domestic. Another aspect that needs to be examined very closely is that of safety. Military men, whatever their service, tend to skimp on safety margins, and it is only the greatest supervision, and a manifest commitment to safety at the highest echelons, which has kept the PAF and Naval Aviation relatively safe. The Army needs to see whether its aviation is doing anything wrong, and how to make it right.
It has been known for PAF pilots to avoid crashing in populated areas. It is perhaps unfair to ask a young man about to have his life cut short, to pay attention to saving the lives of civilians below; but is perhaps inevitable when the young man in question has committed to defending them against all enemies. What happened in Rawalpindi was not just a tragedy for those who died and their families, but for the entire nation. These deaths will not be meaningless, however, if they lead to measures, by all three services, that prevent such tragedies in future.
