India plane overshoots runway, 17 killed
Air India Express confirmed on Saturday that 17 were killed after its Boeing 737- 800 skidded the runway upon landing at Kozhikode Airport in Kerala, India.
The fatalities include the two pilots, the company said in a statement, adding that the four cabin crew members were confirmed safe.
A special relief flight has been arranged from Mumbai and Delhi for rendering humanitarian assistance to all the passengers and the family members, it said.
According to Air India Express, a subsidiary of Air India, there were 174 adult passengers, 10 infants, two pilots and four cabin crew on board the aircraft, which skidded off a runway at Kozhikode Airport in Kerala and broke into two pieces.
The company said the flight IX overshot the runway at Kozhikode Airport at 7: 41 p. m. ( 10: 11 p. m. in Manila) on Friday. No fire was reported at the time of landing.
Abdul Karim, a senior Kerala state police officer, said the dead included one of the pilots of the Air India Express flight. He said at least 15 of the injured were in critical condition and that rescue operations were over.
The two-year-old Boeing 737-800 flew from Dubai to Kozhikode, also called Calicut, in Kerala, India’s southernmost state, the airline said.
A similar tragedy to Friday’s was narrowly avoided at the same airport a year ago, when an Air India Express flight suffered a tail strike upon landing. None of the 180 passengers of that flight were injured.
Kozhikode’s 2,850-meter runway is on a flat hilltop with deep gorges on either side ending in a 34-meter drop. Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep S. Puri said in a statement that the flight “overshot the runway in rainy conditions and went down” the slope, breaking into two pieces upon impact.
An inquiry will be conducted by the ministry’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, he said. The airport’s runway end safety area was expanded in 2018 to accommodate wide-body aircraft.
The runway end safety area meets United Nations international civil aviation requirements, but the UN agency recommends a buffer that is 150 meters longer than what exists at Kozhikode airport, according to Harro Ranter, chief executive of the Aviation Safety Network online database.
Dubai-based aviation consultant Mark Martin said that while it was too early to determine the cause of the crash, annual monsoon conditions appeared to be a factor.
“Low visibility, wet runway, low cloud base, all leading to very poor braking action is what looks like led to where we are at the moment with this crash,” Martin said, calling for the European Aviation Safety Agency and the United States Federal Aviation Administration to assist with the Indian government’s investigation.