Mangalore air crash: How it happened?

In one of the country's worst aviation disaster, an Air India Express flight from Dubai to Mangalore crashed while landing at the Mangalore airport at 6:05 am on Saturday. A Boeing 737-800, the aircraft, with 166 people on board, overshot the runway and crashed into the valley before bursting into flames. The crash killed 158 people and left eight survivors.

The pilot-in-command, Z Glucia was an experienced pilot with 10,000 hours of flying experience and had 19 landings at the Mangalore airport. Co-pilot S S Ahluwalia with 3000 hours of flying experience had as many as 66 landings at this airport.

According to sources, the pilots did not report any malfunction to the Airport Traffic Control (ATC), before landing at the Mangalore Airport. Here's a look at the crash site at Bajpe, about 20 km from Mangalore and 350 km from the state capital Bangalore.

Brand Maharaja takes a hit

The Mangalore crash might have come at an inopportune time affecting AI's brand which is trying to turnaround its ailing finance. More

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Air India brand takes yet another hit

Sun, May 23 05:17 AM

The Mangalore crash may not have come at a more inopportune time for National Civil Aviation Company of India or NACIL, the firm that runs national carrier Air India. Decades of mismanagement and under-investment had saddled the Maharaja with losses of over Rs 12,000-crore and a debt burden of around Rs 17,000-crore. With aggressive competition from private airlines chipping away at its once dominant market position, NACIL had been kept alive by government grants, even while the airline's management had been given a stiff deadline to effect a turnaround in its ailing finances only last year.

State-owned Air India faces the challenge of saving its brand and reputation following the crash of its no-frills flight to the coastal city of Mangalore from Dubai. While the reason for the crash is yet to be established, travellers generally associate a disaster with the brand for a long time.

"With this brand equity of the airline would further go down," aviation expert Jayesh Desai said. Faced with mounting losses, the airline had asked the government to help it stay afloat. The government has provided Rs 800 crore to the flag carrier in February against the airline's demand of Rs 5,000 crore. NACIL was formed in August 2007 after the merger of Indian and Air India.

The tragic incident on Saturday morning is expected to damage the airline's reputation even as it was getting busy to mend its badly battered financials and operations. There were signs of revival as NACIL started cutting its losses in the past few months on the back of an economic recovery and a concomitant growth in air traffic. "The incident would have an impact on the airline if the investigation shows that there was negligence on part of airline or pilot training was inadequate," Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) India head Kapil Kaul said.

A senior aviation industry official said pilots needed special clearance for flying to and from the two south Indian cities of Calicut and Mangalore. External Affairs Minister S M Krishna told news agencies, "It was known and generally understood that the Mangalore airport and the runway is a very tricky runway and the skills of the pilot would be put to the maximum test while landing in Mangalore. Our worst fears have come true."

A Bajaj Allianz executive said insurance companies may ask for a higher premium from the airline the next time it goes for fleet insurance. Asked if there were various instances of B737-800 aircraft crashing, Boeing India president Dinesh Keskar said, "There has certainly not been any other case in India."

Keskar said that a Boeing team from Seattle, the headquarters of the American planemaker, would fly to India as soon as practically possible to help the investigators. fe

Air India flight touches down near halfway mark

OUR BUREAU

Smoke cloaks the wreckage of IX 812 in the valley into which the Boeing 737-800 plunged and burst into flames in Mangalore on Saturday. (PTI picture)

May 22: An Air India Express flight from Dubai overshot the hilltop runway at Mangalore's Bajpe airport today, fell onto a wooded valley some 200 metres below and burst into flames, killing 158 people including 23 children and babies.

India's third-worst air crash, and its first major one in a decade, left behind suspicions of pilot error at one of the country's most picturesque but trickiest airports, its "tabletop" runways precariously perched atop a plateau with their ends dropping off into thick-green gorges.

Eight passengers survived the 6.05am accident almost miraculously, jumping out through a crack in the fuselage as Flight IX 812 hit a concrete navigational aid called a localiser at the end of the runway and broke into two.

"We had no hope to survive, but we survived," G.K. Pradeep, an Indian technician employed in Dubai, said.

Some others among the 160 passengers and six crew members may have leapt into the fire, stoked by aviation fuel gushing out of the wings, as they tried to clamber out through the same "hole".

Airport sources said the Boeing 737-800's 53-year-old pilot Zlatko Glusica, a British national of Serbian origin, had 10,200 hours of flying experience but apparently miscalculated the "landing threshold" and brought the plane down too late.

Instead of landing within the first 1,000-1,300 feet of the 8,300ft-long runway, he touched down almost near the halfway mark although the visibility was a healthy 6km, the sources said. The aircraft lost control on the dry, concrete runway, a burst tyre worsening matters if some of the survivors are right.

There had been no distress signal from the pilot although one survivor mentioned "turbulence" before landing. Veteran pilots suspect that Glusica probably braked hard instead of attempting a "go around" — that is, take off at once, gain enough height and approach once more to land correctly.

Civil aviation minister Praful Patel, whose offer to resign was rejected by the Prime Minister, refused to blame the runway's design. Officials said that since the airport was opened in 2006, it had witnessed over 32,000 landings.

"The conditions were ideal for landing with good visibility and the runway's friction coefficient also appeared in order," Patel said.

He said Glusica had flown in and out of Bajpe at least 19 times, the last time being May 17, and co-pilot H.S. Ahluwaliah, a Mangalorean, had done at least 66 takeoffs and landings there.

The Centre cancelled a dinner to have been hosted in New Delhi tonight by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to mark the UPA II government's first anniversary.

Today's aviation disaster is the first in India since rising middle-class demand fuelled an explosion in air traffic over the past decade. Aviation safety experts, though, have repeatedly sounded warnings about the country's airlines, airports and regulations, raising concern whether India's creaking infrastructure was failing to keep pace with the economic boom.

Last year, there were three near-collisions between planes in Mumbai and in September, an Air India flight to Toronto was delayed 11 hours while staff searched for rats inside the plane. The incidents come at a time the national carrier — Air India Express is its budget arm — has been making huge losses.

All the passengers were Indians, officials said. Sixty of the dead were Malayalis, mostly migrant workers in the Gulf, and 38 of them came from north Kerala's Kasargod, which counts Mangalore as its nearest airport. With several governments and agencies offering compensation, the family of each of the dead stands to receive Rs 76 lakh.

At the crash site, workers pulled scores of burnt bodies from the blackened tangle of aircraft cables, twisted metal, charred trees and mud. Many of the dead were strapped to their seats, their bodies charred beyond recognition. Their relatives, who had come to the airport to welcome them, stood around weeping.

Accidents of this kind, known as "runway excursions", are fairly common but today's led to tragedy because of the tabletop runway, experts said.

The world aviation body has urged all airports to build 1,000ft-long safety extensions at the end of each runway. Those with little room for extension have been advised to install soft ground layers — known as arrestor beds — to slow planes.

The Mangalore runway has a "spillover area" of only 300ft to slow overshooting planes, and there are conflicting claims whether it is a bed of sand.

The plane was two-and-a-half years old, having made its first flight in December 2007. The 737-800 has been involved in five fatal accidents since entering service in 1998.The last major crash in India occurred on July 17, 2000, when an Alliance Air Boeing ploughed into a Patna neighbourhood, killing 60. The deadliest plane disaster in India took place in November 1996, when a mid-air collision involving foreign airlines killed 349.

Your Questions

Was the runway too short?

No. The Mangalore runway is shorter than Calcutta's primary strip but was sufficient for the Boeing 737-800. Mangalore's "tabletop" makes landing tough but so do Kochi and Leh

Why did the plane overshoot?

Unclear. The plane may have come in too fast or landed too far down the runway to slow down in time. Almost no crash is caused by a single factor

Are there safe seats in planes?

No data to say which seats are safer. Survivors are usually those who get thrown out of aircraft that break up on, or very close to, the ground or those who are farthest from the smoke or fire

How safe is air travel?

The odds of being killed on a single flight is 1 in 92 lakh with the top 25 airlines and 1 in 8.44 lakh with the bottom 25 airlines

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Land of Gulf dream

CITHARA PAUL

New Delhi, May 22: Kerala's "Great Gulf Dream" had put many on Flight IX 812, returning from the land of treasure and toil to the home they left in search of jobs.

The dream breathes life to the otherwise stagnant economy of Kerala, the state from where 60 of the crash victims hailed.

Every 16th Malayali is in the Gulf — a piece of statistic that has enriched the local parlance with the term "Gulf Malayali".

Another linguistic invention is "Gulf wives" — a million married women in Kerala who live away from their husbands who cannot afford to take their wives with them.

The over-dependence of Kerala on Gulf Malayalis has become such that those who stayed behind joke that the small state with a backbreaking number of educated unemployed would have sunk into the Arabian Sea had its young not set sail for the Gulf.

Kerala's ties with the Gulf are at least 15 centuries old, dating back to Malik Dinar who landed in Kasargod to spread the tenets of Islam.

He established a mosque in Thalankara in Kasargod, one of the first 10 mosques built in India. In a tragic coincidence, the secretary of the Malik Dinar mosque was one of the 45 Malayalis who was killed today.

Migration from Kerala to the Gulf had started around 18 century with moppilas (Muslims) leaving the coast in search of a better life and, mostly, never to return. Then started the inflow of rich Arabs in search of brides and business, reinforcing the relationship of Malabar (the northern region of Kerala) with the Gulf.

Even now, the Malabar region, especially Kasargod and Malappuram districts, send the maximum number of migrants to the Gulf coast.

There are some panchayats in Kerala that have at least one Gulf Malayali in every family. But unlike the typical image of an NRI, most of the Gulf migrants are unskilled labourers who land there hoping to ensure a better life for the family back home.

The Gulf money did change the face of large swathes, dotted with opulent houses. In some cases, such extravaganza has served only to lock funds without any returns.

Most of the expatriates live a miserable life, some even look after camels, just because the oil-rich Gulf offers them more money. Most of them can afford a trip back home only once in five years. "There are around 22 lakh Gulf Malayalis and of them 90 per cent earn a pittance. An average Gulf Malayali will defy the typical image of an NRI,'' said V.R. Prakash who has carried out studies on the migration pattern.

Even a small tremor in the Gulf — political or economical — would send ripples in Kerala. According to one study, remittances from the Gulf amount to 1.74 times the total revenue receipts of the state government.

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Patel offers to quit, PM refuses to accept

OUR BUREAU

Patel on Saturday. (PTI)

New Delhi, May 22: Praful Patel today offered to resign taking moral responsibility for the air crash, breaking a chain of ministers from Congress allies dismissing flak after accidents or alleged wrongdoing under their watch.

The civil aviation minister returned to Delhi from the crash site to brief the Prime Minister and offered to quit. Sources said Manmohan Singh asked him to continue.

"As head of the civil aviation family, I feel morally responsible that such a sad and tragic accident has taken place," Patel said after the meeting. "The PM told me there are circumstances which, despite our best efforts, are not under our control but are in nature's hands. We should now try to rectify whatever went wrong."

The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) refused comment.

Patel, who is from the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), had earlier taken flak from the PMO for his handling of the Air India strike.

Mamata Banerjee and the DMK have aggressively battled charges against them and their departments.

The railways are allegedly suffering because of minister Mamata's preoccupation with Bengal politics. Her absence from Parliament when Mumbai came to a standstill because of a strike by motormen, and failure to even visit New Delhi station after a stampede last Sunday attracted criticism from the Opposition.

Telecom minister and DMK leader A. Raja faces allegations of having connived with lobbyists to avoid a transparent 2G spectrum auction.

Patel's party chief, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar had faced flak for rising food prices.

Although the Congress never directly attacked any of its allies, the allegations helped tilt the alliance balance in its favour, NCP sources argued.

"Our relationship with the Congress is filled with tension. The Congress always keeps as a weapon anything that can help it tighten screws on us," a senior party leader said.

By acting against then junior foreign minister Shashi Tharoor, the Congress also marked out what it could claim was its "difference" from its allies.

Patel's move "has helped prevent the balance tilting further in the Congress's favour", the NCP leader said.

13-year-old conquers Everest

Jordan Romero

Kathmandu, May 22 (Reuters): A 13-year-old American boy today became the youngest climber to conquer Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain, a climbing website said.

Jordan Romero from Big Bear, California, scaled the 8,850 metre summit from the Tibetan side, on the same day a Nepali man broke his own world record for the most number of successful Everest attempts. "The team has just called in and confirmed that they are standing on top of Mt. Everest," Romero's blog said.

"Their dreams have now come true. Everyone sounded unbelievably happy."

The ascent has put Romero one step closer to reaching his goal of climbing the highest mountains on all seven continents.

"It is just a goal," Romero had told Reuters in the Nepali capital Kathmandu in April. He had already climbed five peaks including Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, and needs to climb only Vinson Massif, the highest peak in Antarctica to hit his target.

The previous youngest person to summit Everest was 16-year-old Temba Tsheri Sherpa of Nepal.

Romero was accompanied by a team including his father Paul, a critical care paramedic, and Sherpa guides. He told Reuters wanted to pick a small piece of rock from the top of the world as a memento and wear it in a necklace.

His next mission is to climb the highest mountains in all 50 states in the United States.

More than 4,000 climbers have reached the top of Mount Everest since it was first climbed by New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Nepal's Tenzing Norgay Sherpa in 1953.

Nepali mountaineer Apa Sherpa broke his own record and climbed Mount Everest for the 20th time, said Ang Tshering Sherpa, chief of the Asian Trekking Agency.

Apa, 50, who lives in the United States, reached the summit on Saturday along the Southeast Ridge route. He carried a banner all the way to the summit to raise awareness of the environmental impact of climate change on the Himalayas.

"It is a fantastic achievement by one individual," said Elizabeth Hawley, who chronicles major climbs in the Himalayan mountain range."Going back year after year after year and succeeding each time is really amazing." (Editing by Matthias Williams)

Lives lost, death defied
Kerala district loses 38 in one fatal blow

JOHN MARY AND CITHARA PAUL

May 22: A hurtling jet, a terrible ball of fire and 38 gone.

Today's crash exacted its heaviest toll on a single district — Kasargod, Kerala's northernmost.

The state itself lost 60, though the tragedy was tinged with some relief. Among the eight survivors were five Malayalis: G.K. Pradeep, Krishnan Koolikunnu, K.P. Mayankutty, Ummer Farook Mohammed and Mohammed Usman.

But as disconsolate relatives searched for their dead at hospital morgues, the wail of loss drowned the tears of relief. And Kasargod grieved the most.

"Every panchayat in this Muslim-dominated district will be bringing home at least one charred body," said Abdul Kareem, a Kasargod native.

Among the victims was Siddique Sulaiman who, till evening yesterday, didn't know if he could make it to his father's funeral in Kasargod this morning. Sulaiman, a salesman with a construction company in Dubai, got the confirmation late last night, little realising it would be his ticket to death.

"His ticket wasn't confirmed till late in the night. Then we got a call from him. He told us he would be landing here by an early morning flight, so we fixed the funeral at 9," Sulaiman's uncle Usman Ali Hassan told The Telegraph from Mangalore.

"We were at the airport since yesterday morning trying to find a flight for Siddique so he could attend the funeral. Finally he got a seat on this flight," Sulaiman's brother-in-law Abdul Nasir told PTI from Dubai.

"We were at the airport to see him off last night. It is a heart-breaking tragedy for the entire family."

Among the shock-numbed was a wife and two children, who had taken a taxi from Kannur, which adjoins Kasargod, to Bajpe airport this morning.

Abdul Samad had sweated it out in the Gulf for 18 years. Yesterday, he called his daughter, a plus-2 student, and told her he was bringing her a surprise gift.

At the airport today, his wife and children saw the Air India Express flight scream down the runway and disappear out of sight. Moments later, flames leapt into the air and a cloud of smoke billowed.

In Kannur and Kasargod, nearly every family has someone in the Gulf. Today, a common grief bound them all — the bitter story of a better life built on Gulf remittances gone wrong in one horrible twist.

For non-resident Malayalis from Kasargod, which borders Karnataka, the nearest airport is Bajpe, renovated and opened a week back. The airport is about 72km from Kasargod, making it comparatively more accessible to overseas travellers than Karipur airport, near Kozhikode, about 225km away.

But Bajpe airport would forever remain scalded into Sameer A. Shaikh's mind. The Saudi Arabia-based businessman, going to attend the last rites of his grandmother, lost 16 relatives in the crash.

"I flew into Mumbai from Saudi Arabia yesterday and was scheduled to catch a Jet Airways flight to Mangalore this morning as I couldn't get a connecting flight from there," he told PTI at Mumbai airport.

The 24-year-old said his maternal uncle, his wife and two children, and 12 distant relatives were among those killed in the crash.

WITH INPUTS FROM PTI

Gaping hole' that saved eight lives

G.C. SHEKHAR AND PTI

Sabrina, one of the survivors of the IX 812 crash, at a Mangalore hospital on Saturday. (PTI)

May 22: When the burning aircraft cracked open moments after touchdown, it provided an escape route for eight passengers who jumped out though the "gaping hole" to save themselves.

Some, like G.K. Pradeep, then jumped again into a pit as the Boeing 737-800 turned into a "ball of fire".

Among the fortunate eight, who include a woman medical intern, was Ummer Farook Mohammed, a 26-year-old Mangalorean driver who was actually cursing his luck while boarding the flight. He had gone to Dubai to find a job but was returning empty-handed.

Three hours later, he still couldn't believe how lucky he had been.

"While so many sitting around me were charred to death, here I am talking before TV cameras," said Farook, his face smothered in white cooling cream and his burnt arms and legs bandaged.

One of the survivors, (From top) Krishnan Koolikunnu (extreme left), has his lunch in a Mangalore hospital. Ummer Farook Mohammed, GK Pradeep and KP Mayankutty — lie in their hospital beds on Saturday. (PTI)

He recalled the last minutes of the flight: "The tyre burst as soon as the plane landed and the aircraft went towards the forest. Within seconds, there was a blast and the plane was filled with smoke and there was complete chaos. A part of the plane had broken apart and through that gap and smoke I could see the trees. I jumped out from there."

Farook vaguely remembers pushing aside someone who was blocking the way. Asked if the other person had managed to escape, he pursed his lips and said: "I don't know."

He had walked in a daze on the rocky terrain for about 30 minutes before some people spotted him, took him some of the way to the hospital on a motorcycle and then put him in an auto-rickshaw.

Mangalorean Joel Pratap D'Souza not only survived the crash but has also found a job in Dubai as a mechanical supervisor.

"I was waiting at the airport to pick him up when I heard a loud sound. Soon, everyone was screaming the plane had crashed," said his cousin Santosh Sequera.

"Since the airport officials doubted anyone would survive the crash and the fire, I was expecting the worse. But around 9am I got a call and heard Joel's voice at the other side. I could not control my tears."

Santosh said Joel had broken his right foot and strained his spine. "The doctors have assured him he can fly to Dubai in a week to take up his new job."

Most of the survivors had minor injuries except the lone woman among them, Sabrina Nasrinhuq. The 23-year-old, Bangladesh-born intern from Manipal Medical College has had her broken leg operated on. She is a citizen of the UAE, where her family lives.

Putturismail Abdulla, 32, a shop manager from Dubai who only needed first aid, remembers a co-passenger "fall into the fire" while trying to escape through the "hole". It didn't deter him.

He said that as soon as he heard the "deafening" tyre burst "I somehow gathered my wits and removed my seatbelt. I peeped out and saw the right wing, which was scraping the ground, had caught fire. When I looked up I saw a gaping hole. Somehow, I climbed up the seat and jumped out through the hole… straight into a thorny bush.

"I walked for about 20 minutes through the jungle, unmindful of the gashes on my legs and arms. Some locals then made me sit and gave me water. I contacted my brother who was already on his way to receive me and reached the hospital with his help."

K.P. Mayankutty thought the plane had hit "something like a building" after touchdown.

Krishnan Koolikunnu said it probably hit a tree before bursting into flames. Krishnan is recovering and had lunch in hospital just hours after the crash.

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Mangalore has one of India's most turbulent airspaces

22 May 2010, 0002 hrs IST,IANS

Topics:

MANGALORE: The Mangalore International Airport, where an Air India Express flight crashed on Saturday killing nearly 170 people, opened in 1951 as the Bajpe Aerodrome when then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru arrived on the maiden flight.

The airspace over the city and its vicinity is among the most turbulent in the country.

"Travel to Mangalore is actually scary. I have experienced some major turbulences and drops," said G. Ganga, who often takes a flight to the city from Chennai to visit pilgrim centres nearby, including Sringeri.

"At times, the way the aircraft rattles, it makes you feel really awkward -- like weighlessness. You just grab your arm rest tight and pray," Ganga told IANS from Chennai.

In June 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had to cancel an event for laying a foundation stone for a $1.06-billion project of the Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemical Ltd as his aircraft could not land there due to bad weather.

The airport's take-off and landing strip is often called a "table-top runway" as it is located on top of a hill. The drop, within 500 meters at the end of the runway, is steep and pilots have often considered landing here difficult.

In May 2006, the airport got a second runway made of concrete and it this runway -- 2,450 meters or 8,000 feet long -- that is now being used.

Last year, the government built a new terminal building at the airport, which was formally inaugurated by Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel and Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa last week.

On Oct 3, 2006, the Air India Express 802 from Dubai became the first international flight to land in Mangalore. It was the the same scheduled operation of which a plane crashed Saturday.

Among the airlines that operate out of Mangalore, Air India Express flies to Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Doha, Dubai, Kozhikode, Kuwait, Mumbai and Muscat. On the domestic circuit, its parent Air India flies to New Delhi, Mumbai and Kozhikode.

Mangalore Air Crash