Survivors of a Air India express plane crash say the jetliner swayed wildly as it roared an onslaught on a hilltop wading through monsoon rain. Moments later, the special return flight for Indians abroad was shaken by the pandemic, shattered and cracked in two, killing at least 18 people and injuring more than 120.
Among the injured on Friday night were at least 15 in critical condition, said Abdul Karim, a senior police officer in the southern state of Kerala. The dead included both pilots of the Air India Express flight, the airline said in a statement, adding that the four crew members were safe.
CBS News has confirmed that the captain of the flight was Deepak Vasant Sathe, a former test pilot in the Indian Air Force.
The 2-year-old Boeing 737-800 flew from Dubai to Kozhikode, also called Calicut, in Kerala. There were 174 adult passengers, 10 beekeepers, two pilots and four cabin crew on board.
STRINGER / REUTERS
In a telephone interview from his hospital bed, Renjith Panangad, a plumber who returned home for the first time in three years after losing his job at a construction company in Dubai, said the plane swerved before the accident and everything went smoothly. dark.
He said he followed other passengers who were crawling out of the fuselage through the emergency exit.
“A lot of passengers blew up,” said Panangad, who escaped without major injuries. “I still can’t understand what happened. While I try to think back to what happened, my body is shaking.”
He said the pilot made a regular announcement before landing, and moments after the plane hit the runway, it exploded.
“There was loud noise during the impact and people started screaming,” he said.
Passenger Renjith Panangad, 34, recalled the plane crashing to the ground and then everything went ’empty’.
“After the accident, the emergency door opened and I somehow dragged myself out,” he told AFP from a hospital bed in Kozhikode.
“The first part of the plane was gone – it was completely gone. I do not know how I made it, but I am grateful. I am still shocked.”
Video posted on social media showed the aftermath of the accident with fire hoses being sprayed on the plane.
When the rain stopped Saturday morning, searchers retrieved a record of flight data when the Air Accident Investigation Board began work on the wreckage. Air India Express said its teams also reached out to Calicut to support and assist the families of the victims.
The wreckage of the plane lay under a flat hilltop, its nose crashing through a wall. The fuselage of the plane was split in two and cables hung from the wreckage and luggage and seats rounded.
A similar tragedy was narrowly avoided at the same airport a year ago, when an Air India Express flight on landing landed a tail hit. Not one of the 180 passengers on that flight was injured.
Kozhikode’s 2,850-meter (9,350-foot) runway is located on a flat hilltop with deep cliffs on opposite sides that end at a drop of 34 meters (112 meters).
Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep S. Puri said in a statement that the flight ‘overtook the runway in the rainy conditions and the slope went down, breaking into two pieces on impact.
Questions that researchers investigate may include not only the aircraft, the weather and the pilots, but also the runway itself. The security area of its security was expanded in 2018 to accommodate wide body aircraft.
The runway safety zone meets the international requirements of United Nations civil aviation, but the UN agency recommends a buffer that is 150 meters (492 feet) longer than that at Kozhikode Airport , according to Harro Ranter, chief executive of the Aviation Safety Network’s online database.
The Press Trust of India press office reported that in 2019 the country’s aviation regulator had sought an explanation from the director of Kozhikode airport about finding “several critical safety failures” that burst on the runway, water stagnation and excessive rubber deposits.
Aviation regulator officials said it was too early to say at this point whether the crash was the result of a technical error or human error.
Aviation consultant Mark-Dubai, in Dubai, said annual moonsoon conditions appeared to be a factor, although it was too early to be sure of the cause.
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“Low visibility, wet track, low cloud base, all leading to very poor response is what it looks like, leading to where we are at the moment with this accident,” Martin said, calling for the European Aviation Agency and the US Federal Aviation Administration to assist in the investigation of the Indian government.
Kerala Health Minister KK Shailaja asked local residents who participated in the rescue effort to go into quarantine as a precautionary measure. The survivors were screened for the virus, officials said.
The Air India Express flight was part of the Indian government’s special repatriation mission to bring Native American citizens back to the country, officials said. All passengers were returning from the Gulf region, authorities said. Regular commercial flights have been stopped in India due to the outbreak of coronavirus.
The passenger manifesto of the flight, a copy of which was seen by CBS News, revealed that a large number of passengers stranded tourists and workers reunited with their families after months away.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that he was ‘pained by the plane crash in Kozhikode’, and that he had spoken to the top elected official of Kerala.
Air India Express is a subsidiary of Air India.
The last major plane crash in India was in 2010 when an Air India Express plane from Dubai to Mangalore overturned the runway and burst into flames. The crash killed 158 people and left eight survivors behind.
The worst air disaster in India was on November 12, 1996, when a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight collided with a Kazakhastan Airlines flight at Charki Dadri in the state of Haryana, killing all 349 people on board the two planes.
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