Solar plane’s journey gets stuck in red tape

The SI-2 team tweeted about the bureaucratic red-tapism and made an appeal to help them in getting passport clearance.

‘Before having the stamp, you are nobody.’, tweeted Bertrand Piccard, the pilot and co-founder of world’s first solar powered aircraft Solar Impulse 2 on Wednesday, after he faced a 2-hour delay in joining his crew waiting to fly out to Varanasi to prepare for the arrival of the ‘fuel-less’ aircraft which flew out from Ahmedabad in the wee hours of the morning to land in Varanasi in the evening.

Piccard’s growing discontent with the red tape at the Ahmedabad airport was evident at a press briefing held hours before the solar aircraft flew out to Varanasi in the early hours of Wednesday morning, where he said, “The delay is (because of) of administration, papers, stamps…When I arrived here with solar Impulse, there were authorities, media and ceremony. I was covered with garlands and shawls gifted by the people who received me and I missed immigration clearance. And now I am desperate to get the clearance since last five days.”

Piccard further added that whenever he went for clearance the authorities postponed it to the following day and predicted a delay for the aircraft and called it a “big mess”. Later on, piloted by Andre Borschberg, the SI2 faced delays for its scheduled take off to Varanasi which was pushed back from 5:30 am to 7:18 am in the morning owing to customs clearances.

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However, as the SI2’s crew waited for Piccard to join on, they soon began a series of tweets about the long wait for immigration stamp on Piccard’s passport from Solar Impulse’s official Twitter handle. As many 15 tweets and two retweets in two hours by the crew relayed the growing panic in the team about how the delay in getting Piccard’s passport stamped could jeopardise the mission by ruining the chance for the SI2 team to arrive in time at Varanasi to help with SI2’s landing.

Even as the widespread social media attention generated by the tweets from the SI2’s official Twitter handle put the Gujarat government in a spot, sources at the government departments facilitating the SI2 crew and airport officials claim negligence and miscommunication on part of the SI2 crew.

A highly placed source at the Ahmedabad airport said, “When the crew members landed at the airport they didn’t clear the immigration and left the airport premises without even intimating the immigration officer. This would have initiated a legal action against them had they not been ‘state guests’. It is mandatory for international crews or passengers to get immigration clearance before they step out of airport. The crew members only a couple of days back came saying their passports needed to be stamped which took time.”

While Chief secretary of state DJ Pandian had been present when the solar plane landed in the city, the aircraft got a cold farewell with no other ministers or state officials having made it to the airport to see it take off on Wednesday.

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“When he (Piccard) came to India and was greeted with a function he missed getting an immigration stamp. Due to the function he didn’t come through the normal channels and wait in queue like other people and that was the reason his passport was not stamped. So he had to finish the formalities on the way and there was a delay, which is what was conveyed to us at the airport,”said Omkar Jani, Principal Research Scientist for Solar Energy at GERMI which is one of the nodal agencies designated by Gujarat Government apart from GEDA to coordinate events by the government.

“While there were a few officials who were to make sure everything went well but no top bureaucrats were present at the time of the plane’s take-off. While the plane was initially set to take off at 5:30 am, it finally flew around 7:15 due to technical reasons.” Jani added.

While Twitterati rallied and retweeted SI2’s panic which the crew relayed in the form of humour, videos of the long wait and even songs, the situation took political colours where tweets were relayed to Indian PM’s Narendra Modi’s official Twitter and that of MEA (Ministry of External Affairs) and the likes of corporate heavyweight Kiran Mazumadar Shaw, chief of Indian biotechnology company Biocon also took the microblogging platform to vent their ire against the government red tape which was delaying the pilot.

As many as 22,000 people from Ahmedabad have witnessed the SI2 at the tarmac near Ahmedabad airport in the past 8 days since the plane landed on March 10, which includes corporate sponsors of the SI2 project, school children, academic institutions and government functionaries.

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The fuel-less aeroplane (SI2) is on a 5- month long journey with stops in major cities, touching 12 countries around the world to promote clean renewable energy and clean technology and had taken off on its round-the world trip on March 8 from Abu Dhabi. After a brief stop in Muscat, SI2 landed in Ahmedabad on March 10 and on its onward journey to Varanasi, pilot Andre Borschberg will fly the zero-fuel aeroplane on about 1071 km for an estimated time of 15 hours and reach at an estimated around 9pm.

With inputs from Satish Jha

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