Over-the-top negligence

Kozhikode crash was completely avoidable

The long-delayed report by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) on the crash of Air India flight IX1344 at Kozhikode’s table-top runway last year offers a depressing litany of avoidable errors that would have saved the lives of 21 people, including the two pilots, and prevented serious injuries to 75 others. The headline rubric of “pilot error” masks a reprehensible organisational flouting of basic safety norms that brought tragedy to IX 1344, which was returning from a “Vande Bharat” mission to repatriate Indian nationals stranded in West Asia after the Covid-19 pandemic brought global aviation to a halt. The AAIB’s