On a high at Hosur Airfield...

The idea of flight, that we can also take it to the air and the invention of heavier than air aircraft has always been a very fascinating tale. I can’t help but wonder how strong the imagination was to fly when nothing man made of that sort existed, and how determined were all the people who dared to attempt heavier than air flight prior to wright brothers, rather unsuccessfully and met death in the process in many cases. Things are different now of course, the modern day Aviation is one interesting domain. It is adventurous, adrenaline gushing, glamorous and has evolved to become very vital for transport and defence.  This blog is a narration of one of many series of events from my workplace, of people there and their share of bonding/attachment with aircraft and a reason to be proud of it all. I thought that this one exception from travel tales here can be made, convincing myself that aircraft are related to travel anyway.

Hosur Airfield on Approach Runway 09

                                          

Hosur Airfield

 It all started in December 2013 when a Jet Boeing 737-800 made its appearance at Hosur Airfield, this was not the first time, aircraft of both the Airbus 320 family and Boeing 737 family make their presence felt at Hosur Airfield. The airfield itself is a mystery to many, it is owned by a private company TAAL and houses an MRO-Airworks, the mystery being its location and identification. The first day when I hopped down from a bus in Belagondapalli village(Hosur Airfield is at this village), ambitious and proud joining this new job, declaring out loud that I needed to go to Hosur Airport, I was mocked and told that the nearest airport is BIAL and is about 70kms away. Maybe they were true, Hosur airfield is not an airport per se as it does not have any civil aircraft movement but it’s an airfield nevertheless and noted for its MRO capability with the pioneer of Indian MRO’s based here. Even today about 90% of people from Hosur don’t know of the existence of an airfield in their city (it’s always fun to look at their faces when you say there is one).

A Boeing 737-800 Lands at Hosur 

...and gets worked on almost immediately after landing!!!

Back again to the jet aircraft which landed here, she was to stay for a while on a purpose. It’s common that many aircraft in airlines all over the world are leased from leasing companies and so was this one, the lease period however was completed with Jet and the owner was leasing it to some other airline, the whole process is called a re-delivery. Sounds simple? Well, it’s not quite simple actually. Firstly, no other Indian MRO has ever done a Boeing 737 redelivery and the checks which are a part of this whole re-delivery “thing” are to be handled very carefully and to be carried out with complete attention, skill, precision and dedication in the order as mentioned. This is no vehicle moving on solid ground, it’s an aircraft and for obvious reasons airworthiness can’t be compromised, zero tolerance to error is the norm in most cases.

ATR and other aircraft welcome Boeing Dearest

My role kicks in only when the aircraft has to depart for a test flight as I am concerned with flight operations and Air traffic, my other flight ops team had to go weeee running to the tower and back, coordinating for clearances amongst heavy fighter test flight traffic over the airspace and of course with due compliance and respect to the one variable which no human has control over (never would)-The weather. The test flight went perfectly well with absolutely no defects reported and the Managers, Foremen, Engineers, Technicians and the blokes who worked on the aircraft were evidently happy, rightfully so, they spent nights and days on making this machine ready to go to another airline. Meanwhile the livery was changed to a Korean based airline. It’s interesting to know that the air route between Jeju and Seoul in South Korea is the world’s busiest in terms of passengers carried. In 2012 about 10 million odd passengers flew between these two cities, more than the total population of Bangalore, Huge no?

On Test flight departure

Landing After Test flight

The Magic words:- Operations Normal, Test flight successful

A lot of e-mails, few parties, lots of excitement later it was time for this aircraft to depart to its new operator in Korea. The South Korean crew were very humble and infinitely awesome, they didn’t mind waiting a bit due to ATC delay and finally when I did clear for Take-off and the crew read back the same, it was time for something happening for the first time. A Boeing 737 on take-off roll on its maiden departure flight from an Indian MRO,  I find myself so lucky and honoured to be a part of the whole thing, albeit a small part but a significant one.

The Departure, Goodbye!!

Parked along with a sister aircraft

I saw all the technicians, engineers, managers and everyone walking back from the apron with very happy faces, sad faces and few with mixed reactions written on their faces probably confused between happiness of them being involved in this historic moment and sadness from parting with a machine which they have so dearly worked on from the last few weeks, ripping it bare and making it complete. I guess man and machine can form deep bonds in some weird way after all, a way which has neither reasons nor analogies. All these folks, the engineering team I mean, they are the heroes of this whole re-delivery project in my humble opinion, they simply love to make things fly!!

Three liveries of three different airlines

Few RT comms with the aircraft later, we changed her over to the Radar frequency and bid her Annyong haseyo and got a chuckle from the Pilot in return for our enthusiastic attempt at goodbye in Korean. See you soon, he said and so we hoped looking at the aircraft, flying high!!