For starters , if given a chance IC would certainly NOT be the airline I would like to travel for the rest of my life.To answer your question , Indian Airlines lost ONE aircraft in the last decade , that is the B 737 - 200 they lost in Patna.Technically it was Alliance Air but the crew were on deputation from IC.But I agree with you , IC does produce some of the finest crew and I am happy to say that I did have the privilege to have flown with them and did learn much from them.But what tends to cause problems with many of the crew from IC is the attitude and work culture and the last accident testifies this.Let's face it the accident rates all over the world have been brought down substantially due to the technology we have on board aircraft these days and this has helped IC no doubt.From my experience , most of the guys I flew with from IC seemed to convey the message to me that I would have never made the cut in IC and that only a chosen few made it into IC.I always had this nagging question , why if the pilots were so good was the flight safety record pathetic....I got my answer years ago at a get together of mainly IC guys...a couple of drinks and they were talking of the heroes of yesterday...the type of approaches flown , things done ...blah blah blah...and I realized that the heroes in their eyes were the ones that cared 2 bits about procedures and regulations......and the ones that actually thought like commercial pilots were the weak pilots....coming back to the Mumbai incident I have my own theory on what could have happened...but we'll wait for the facts to come out and I'll confess if I was right ...
