158 killed in Mangalore air tragedy ایئر انڈیا کا طیارہ گرکر تباہ، 158 مسافر ہلاک

MANGALORE(Times of India) : An Air India Boeing 737-800 attempting to land on a hilltop runway in good weather and clear visibility shot beyond the runway, careened over the cliff, and exploded into a fiery wreckage on Saturday, killing 158 passengers and crew in India's worst aviation disaster in 14 years. 

Miraculously, eight passengers survived. 

Of the survivors, three suffered major injuries and one was completely unhurt. All survivors were sitting close to where the aircraft snapped into two near the fuselage. There were 160 passengers plus six crew on board the Air India Express flight from Dubai to Mangalore, among them 19 children and four infants. 

Two inquiries have been ordered into the crash — one by the civil aviation ministry and the other by DGCA. But already, fingers were being pointed at the pilots. Civil aviation minister Praful Patel said the plane had landed "beyond the threshhold" on the runway — in other words, the pilot touched down far too late on the 2,400-metre runway for the plane to halt in time. Both the pilot Zlatko Glusica and co-pilot H S Ahluwalia are dead. 

A visibly contrite minister was on the spot supervising the rescue operations. In the evening he went back to Delhi to meet the Prime Minister. It is learnt Patel has offered his resignation owning up "moral responsibility". It hasn't been accepted so far. 

According to eye-witness, the plane landed at 6.02am. In a matter of seconds, the pilot seemed to have lost control and sped towards the end of Runway 24, overshooting the sand-bedded safety area of 90 metres. When the Mangalore airport was expanded and the runway lengthened in 2006, some critics had claimed that a 90-metre safety area was insufficient as a 300-metre area was the norm. 

Not being able to stop with the 90-metre safety area, the aircraft, barely 2-1/2-years old, plunged 300 metres down the cliff into the forested valley and broke up into flames after hitting a landing aid called the localizer at the extreme end of the safety area. 

As the smoke cleared, teary tales of loss spilled out of the wreckage of Flight IX812 of Air India's budget arm which flies to Middle Eastern cities. Seventeen members of an extended family had perished, said a man identified as Samir, adding that he himself was booked on the next flight because this one was full. Another victim was travelling from Dubai to Kerala for his father's funeral and another was flying to see his mother on her death bed. 

The survivors, all of whom have virtually got a second life, were identified as Joel Prathap D'Souza, Sabrina Hak, Umar Farouq Mohammed, Mayan Kutty, Pradeep G K, Krishnan Kollikunnu, Abdul Puthur Ismail and Mohammed Usman. 

They had all managed to jump off the craft through the gap created by a broken wing. Five airport fire engines reached the spot in 10 minutes as they had to negotiate a tricky path, made slushy by two days of pre-monsoon showers, to reach the accident site to douse the flames. 

By this time, residents of Malavoor and Kenjaru villages had rushed to the spot and rescued six passengers who had managed to come out of the wreckage. 

For the rest, strapped to their seats for landing, the end was brutally fiery. All passengers and crew were charred to death or asphyxiated by the smoke. Many of the bodies recovered by rescuers were barely recognizable and were being identified by their clothes and personal effects. 

"The aircraft landed beyond its normal threshold and overshot the runway," said civil aviation minister Praful Patel, who supervised the search operations. Saying he was "morally responsible" Patel explained there was no hint of bad visibility or winds and the runway was dry. 

Scores of relatives who had come to receive passengers rushed down the hillside. Times Now, whose crew reached the spot first, showed them in despairing huddles close to the crash site, many of them weeping. 

Search and rescue operations were hampered initially due to incessant rain for about two hours and later by the difficult terrain which remained slippery. Many villagers came to help the rescue team seeing the smoke rising from the wreckage. But they proved to be a deterrent due to over-crowding, an airport official added. 

On Saturday night, all bodies were recovered but more than 100 were still to be identified. As per the Montreal Convention, the families of those killed will be given compensation of $160,000 and the injured depending on their wounds. 

Theories swirled even as most experts appeared to agree that pilot error while landing caused the crash. 

Captain Zlatko Glusica, a 53-year-old British national, had made 19 landings at the 2,430 metre Bajpe "table top" landing strip and co-pilot H S Ahluwalia had done 66. While Gluscia had 10,200 hours of flying experience, Ahluwalia had 3,650 hours. 

"There was no distress indication from the pilot. That means between the pilot and the airport communication there was no indication of a problem," said V P Agarwal, director of Airports Authority of India.