Air Disasters Part 1: Are they preventable, but why do they still happen?

Fact-finding missions or inquiries are a subtle way to downplay the impact and gravity of the unprecedented disasters.

A clipping of an air tragedy in The Tribune's Saturday Plus. / Courtesy Photo Prabhjot Singh

Air disasters are catastrophic, as each one unfolds a unique horror story, leaving the victims, the aviation experts, and the general public wondering whether they were preventable. If yes, then why were they not? Fact-finding missions or inquiries are a subtle way to downplay the impact and gravity of the unprecedented disasters unleashed by momentous and tragic errors that can be human, machine, or nature-induced.

During my 50 years in journalism, I witnessed some of the air disasters that rocked the world. The bombing of the Kanishka (a Boeing 747-237 of Air India) on June 23, 1985, was perhaps the biggest and the worst disaster involving a single aircraft. All 307 passengers and 22 crew members on board the ill-fated aircraft perished as it came down crashing from midair.

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