An Air India Express aircraft from Dubai overshot the table-top runway at the Mangalore airport this morning and crashed into thick vegetation in the valley below, killing 158 persons on board. Eight passengers had a miraculous escape. This is the worst air crash of the last ten years in the country. In 1996, two aircraft had collided over Charkhi Dadri in Haryana in which 349 people had died.
The aircraft overshot the touchdown area of the runway and crossed the spillover area of 90 metres before it crashed into the forest. One of its wings hit the concrete localiser instrument, a navigation aid at the end of the spillover area, and fell down. The plane broke into two after the crash and fire broke out in the fuselage.
Taking moral responsibility for the accident, Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel, in a meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, offered to resign his post. But Prime Minister Singh asked him to continue and see that such incidents do not happen in the future.
Briefing the media in the evening, Patel said that the visibility at the time of the crash was 6 km, the air was calm and the runway was dry. The aircraft had got the final permission to land when it was 4 km away from the runway. It is being said that the pilot braked hard after missing the touchdown point by a fourth on the runway. As a result, a tyre burst which forced the aircraft to veer aside. Air India Express is the low-cost arm of Air India, the state-owned, loss-ridden carrier. The cause of the accident is likely to be known once the black box of the aircraft is recovered.
Patel travelled to the site of the accident in the morning from Mumbai to supervise the rescue effort. In the evening, he briefed Prime Minister Singh in New Delhi on the accident and the relief measures under way. The kin of each of the dead, said Patel, will get compensation of up to $160,000 (Rs 72 lakh).
The Boeing 737-800 aircraft was two-and-a-half years old and was flown with an experienced Serbian pilot, Zlatko G, in command and an Indian co-pilot, H S Ahluwalia. Zlatko had 10,000 hours of flying experience, out of which 7,500 hours were as commander. Ahluwalia had 3,750 hours of flying experience. Both, said Patel, had ample experience of landing at the Mangalore airport.
An inquiry has been ordered by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation into the crash, and an Air India team will assist it in the probe. The team, headed by Executive Director (operations) Anup Srivastava, will establish the circumstances, collect data and assist the DGCA inquiry. Boeing is also sending a team to India to provide technical assistance in the investigation. Airports Authority of India sources said there was no distress call from the pilots when they got clearance to land the ill-fated flight. “There is no operational deficiency in the airport,” AAI Chairman V P Agarwal said.
Mangalore Airport, which handles 32 domestic and international flights every day as of now, started operation in the early 1950s. It was set to be declared an international airport ahead of the Global Investors Meet scheduled for June 3 and 4 in the city. Today’s crash could have an impact on this.
Even though government officers reiterated throughout the day that the airport has been running efficiently since 2006, External Affairs Minister SM Krishna said that the Mangalore airport is tricky. “It was known and generally understood that the Mangalore airport and the runway is a very tricky runway, and the skills of the pilot would be put to maximum test while landing in Mangalore. Our worst fears have come true,” he said. In defence of the airport, Patel said that for an aircraft like this, 8,500 feet of runway is adequate; the Mangalore runway was 9,000 feet in length.
The airport, which is surrounded by hills, was shut down for eight hours after the accident. Flights were resumed in the afternoon. A Kingfisher flight from Bangalore with 25 passengers on board landed at 1:50 pm.
The United Progressive Alliance government’s plan to celebrate the completion of one year in office has been cancelled in the wake of the tragedy. Prime Minister Singh has announced an ex-gratia payment of Rs 2 lakh to the family of those dead and Rs 50,000 to those injured from the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund.
