The Avaricious Sindhi
I may be the only bloke from the IAF to induct two types of
aircraft. It often requires you to go abroad and fly the purchased aircraft back to India. I would like to add a story about petty selfishness here.It concerns a Sindhi and an equally greedy Punjabi businessman.
My team leader in France for the induction of the French company,
AMBDA or Marcel Dassault’s latest production, the Mirage-2000, was a Wing
Commander and the second in command a senior Squadron Leader, due for promotion
within a month of returning to India. We were to ferry quite a few aircraft to
India. After the first ferry, the two honchos submitted a Ferry Report and
added a paragraph in fine print that all
ferries were to be led only by Wing Commanders (Wg Cdr), i.e., themselves.
Moreover, the Wg Cdr not ferrying the aircraft was to go as the leader of the
advance party−four weeks in advance−in order to sign the taking over
documentation and return with the Ferry team in the supporting Transport
aircraft, an IL-76. Thus both these selfish chaps were overseas, one way or
another. This clause was deleted after the last ferry. Greed has no bounds and
you will see that regularly.
This same Wing Commander was selected as the Air Attache to
Ukraine while another Wing Commander was selected for Sweden. Using his
beguiling charm, this scheming Wing Commander managed to persuade his erstwhile
Directing Staff at the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington, Ootacamund
to change over the two names so that he could go to Sweden while the deserving
Wg Cdr was shunted off to Ukraine.
No comments:
Post a Comment