Airport housing

On August 15, a Ural Airlines A321 flight U6178 took off from Moscow’s Zhukovsky International Airport and while climbing at 750 feet was hit by a flock of large birds which damaged both engines; the pilot managed to land in a corn field just near the runway. If this had been a populated area, like we have on the periphery of every major airport in Pakistan, the 226 passengers and 7 crew on board the flight – and hundreds of citizens living in populated areas – would have been victims of this catastrophe. Fortunately, the Moscow Civil Aviation regulatory authority enforced a 15-km sterile zone and the pilot skillfully landed in the corn field, managing to save all those on board. There were no fatalities on he ground because Moscow Civil Aviation had not allowed any urbanization and housing schemes to be built in the vicinity of the airfield.

This should serve as a reminder to our CAA and the federal government of the criminal negligence of those who issued NOC to powerful real-estate developers to build housing projects right next to the fencing of all our airports. Even at the New Islamabad Airport, housing societies are being allowed to emerge, while the federal government and CAA succumb to the powerful land mafia and its nexus within the paid bureaucracy and political elite.

Malik Tariq Ali

Lahore