Relief fields along the Ghats are full before the afternoon build

By early afternoon on Thursday the inland fields that west-coast crews use as relief when the Ghats disappear had stopped being relief. They were destinations. A desk sample of five coastal airports showed diversions stacking at two inland strips that do not have the stands for them, and a third that does but sits an extra twenty minutes of fuel away — fuel several crews had already planned to spend on a second approach at the coast.

Saffron Air cancelled the last bank out of Mangaluru on the ground. A rival launched two aircraft and recovered both inland, then cancelled the return because the crews were out of hours in the wrong city. The difference will show up on Friday’s first wave, which is already short a frame.

“The chart is not the weather,” said a Saffron dispatcher. “The chart says the alternate is open. The alternate is open if you are the first one there. We were not going to be the first.”

The meteorology was ordinary for the season. The planning was not. Several manuals still treat the Ghats as a line you cross, not as a wall that closes the coast and the near inland together. Saffron has asked its crews to brief a far alternate before pushback when the scarp is already building at noon. It is a dull sentence. It is the sentence that kept their aeroplanes on the coast they meant to leave from in the morning.