Saw aircraft fall towards us, says first respondent

NEW DELHI/THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The black box of an Air India Express jet that overshot the tabletop runway of the Calicut International Airport while arriving from Dubai, nosedived and split into two was recovered on Saturday, even as authorities launched an investigation into the worst air disaster in India in a decade that has claimed 18 lives.

Civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri visited the site of the accident on Saturday to assess the situation on the ground. “It (the plane) overshot the runway while trying to land amid what were clearly inclement weather conditions prevailing at that time,” he said at a news briefing, but added that it was still too early to speculate on the cause of the crash.

The Union minister said two separate teams reached Kozhikode from New Delhi to carry out investigations into the crash. Responders managed to rescue most of the passengers because the plane did not catch fire while descending the slope at the end of the runway, he added.

Puri said there was no question over the pilots’ competence.

An official from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder were recovered from the crash site on Saturday.

The cockpit voice recorder keeps a recording of all the conversations taking place in a plane’s cockpit.

Investigators have recovered “black box” recorders that log flight data and cockpit voice from the site

NEW DELHI: Ajeet Singh, 31, a CISF assistant sub-inspector, was on duty at the Calicut airport on Friday when he heard an ear-splitting sound. Next, he saw an aircraft at the edge of the runway. Singh was the first rescuer to enter the damaged aircraft.