Air India Express from Dubai crashes at Mangalore Airport

[Naim 6]

Air India Express from Dubai crashes at Mangalore Airport

 

By Team Mangalorean

 

BAJPE (MANGALORE AIRPORT) May 21, 2010: Air India Express flight coming from Dubai today crashed near Mangalore airport while coming in for landing from Dubai into Mangalore on Saturday May 22. It had 169 people including 163 passengers and six crew members aboard and according to an estimation over 100 are feared dead.

 

Following the mishap the airport has been closed according to the airport authorities. According to preliminary reports the plane had developed a technical snag. Later one of its two engines caught fire and the plane burnt in the air before crashing down. This happened at 6 am. The flight had left Dubai international airport at around 1.10am (Dubai time).

 

Mangalorean.com will keep you up dated frequently during the day.

 

http://mangalorean.com/news.php?newstype=broadcast&broadcastid=181196

[Ignatius 4]

Seems like 737-NG crash rates are pretty high <_>

[Naim 6]

Latest report says 160 died.

 

Mangalore is on the west coast of India, almost halfway between Cochin & Goa. We passed thru the city in our train ride Cochin-Goa in 2004.

Edited May 22, 2010 by Naim

[Naim 6]

[flee 5]

Seems like 737-NG crash rates are pretty high <_>

Are you sure - any statistics to back this up?

 

I think B738s and A322s are workhorses of most short-medium range routes and the likelihood of them crashing is greater due to the amount of aircraft and flights operated.

[flee 5]

Unconfirmed reports suggests that the aircraft's reggo is VT-AXV. Here is Chaity's shot of the plane:

 

[Johan Z 0]

Eight rescued, hundreds still feared dead in Air India runway crash

[Pieter C. 5]

Unconfirmed reports suggests that the aircraft's reggo is VT-AXV.

 

This is what I found out sofar:

 

Details:

 

Beyond runway 28 at Mangalore International Airport

 

Passengers 163 Crew 6 Injuries unknown

 

Fatalities 160 Survivors 9

 

Aircraft type Boeing 737-8HG

 

Operator Air-India Express

 

Tail number VT-AXV

 

Flight origin Dubai International Airport, Dubai Destination Mangalore International Airport, India

 

Air-India Express Flight 892 was a scheduled Air India-operated international passenger flight from Dubai International Airport that crashed on 22 May 2010 at about 06:30 local time after overshooting the runway at Mangalore International Airport. The aircraft was a Boeing 737-8HG, registered VT-AXV (msn 36333/ln 2491), delivered to Air India Express on 15 January, 2008. The aircraft first flown on 20 December, 2007, under the rest registration N1787B.

 

Crash details

 

The plane crashed after it had attempted to land at the airport's runway. Footage showed debris to be on fire shortly after the crash. According to television images, the plane lay on its belly and smoke rose into the air. There were 173 persons on board, including 163 passengers, four infants and six crew members. The plane had a crew of 6. Karnataka Home Minister V. S. Acharya said at least 160 people had been killed in the crash. Karnataka Home Minister V. S. Acharya said six to seven people had survived, but CNN-IBN reported that eight to ten people were being treated at a hospital. It was said that six people were treated but now everyone is dead. The plane's landing was successful but then it failed to halt and plummeted off a cliff. There was neither an indication nor a signal that there was a sign of distress. There is a lot of rain, reduced visibility and cloud as rescuers attempt to clean up the scene...

 

Believe this was the last AXB B738 to pass through BHX on delivery.

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------

 

RIP to all perished...

[aaronhiew 0]

Sad to hear that...

[BC Tam 2]

It has been a depressing month or two of late as far as aviation safety is concerned

[Waiping 12]

Ya, 2 minor cases with CX and now this one all within this week alone.

[Naim 6]

May 24, 2010

Pilot tried to pull out of landing just before India air crash

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article7134254.ece

 

Posted On Monday, May 24, 2010 at 03:26:17 AM

AI plane’s black box found

http://www.ahmedabadmirror.com/article/4/20100524201005240326179073917cdc9/AI-plane%E2%80%99s-black-box-found.html

[Pieter C. 5]

Speed, landing point focus of Air India Express crash investigation

 

By Geoffrey Thomas | May 24, 2010

 

Indian crash investigators are focusing on the speed and touchdown point of an Air India Express 737-8HG that crashed at Mangalore-Bajpe Airport Saturday morning, killing 158 of the 166 passengers and crew onboard.

 

Air India Express is a low-cost subsidiary of the state-run carrier. Flight IX812 was en route from Dubai to Mangalore and the crew did not report any problems with the aircraft or weather. The accident occurred at around 6:30 a.m. local time. Nine passengers failed to board the aircraft in Dubai. According to press reports, the FDR and CVR were recovered Sunday.

 

The two-year-old 737-8HG, VT-AXV, piloted by an experienced Serbian-born captain who had landed at the airport 16 times previously, skidded off the 2,450-m. runway, plunged down a 200-ft. gorge and burst into flames. Mangalore’s airport is located on a hilltop and the main Runway 24/06 has gorges at either end.

 

Survivors of India’s worst aviation disaster in 14 years described hearing a loud thud shortly after touchdown and the fuselage ruptured when the aircraft hit landing lights at the end of the runway. Boeing is sending a team to provide technical assistance to Indian authorities, while NTSB and FAA will have teams on site by Tuesday.

 

The crash, the second major landing accident in just two weeks, brings into focus the scourge of aviation--landing accidents, which account for approximately 50% of all crashes. A new report compiled by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau looking at 141 landing accidents between 1998 and 2007 found that in 42% of them, “press-on-itis” was a contributing factor and 78% of those could have been prevented by a timely go-around. Runway excursions account for 96% of all runway accidents, 80% of fatal runway accidents and 75% of related fatalities, according to the Flight Safety Foundation.

 

The ATSB report found that the most common types of contributing factors to runway overruns were flight crew technique or decision-related factors, and weather.

 

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Airliner Crashes In South India, 158 Dead

 

May 23, 2010

 

An Air India Express airliner crashed and burst into flames outside an airport in southern India on Saturday, killing 158 people, many thought to be Indian migrant workers returning home from Dubai.

 

The Boeing 737-800 appeared to skid off the table-top runway in rain at Mangalore airport in Karnataka state and plunged into forest below, Air India director Anup Srivastava said.

 

Eight people survived from among 166 passengers and crew on board, he said.

 

At least 146 bodies had been recovered, Civil Aviation ministry official M. Nambiar said.

 

"We had no hope to survive, but we survived," Pradeep, an Indian technician working in Dubai, told local television.

 

"The plane broke into two and we jumped off the plane. As soon as the plane landed, within seconds this happened."

 

Local television showed a fireman carrying what seemed to be the remains of a child from the smoking wreckage. Charred bodies lay in the forested terrain.

 

All the passengers were Indian nationals, an Air India official said. Many were likely to be Indian migrant workers in Dubai, the rich Gulf emirate which employees thousands of men and women for poorer Asian countries, often to fill lowly jobs.

 

The pilot was Serbian and said to be very experienced.

 

Air India Express is the budget arm of the loss-ridden state-run carrier Air India, which has been fending off growing competition from private airlines.

 

The flight's black box has been recovered, the United Arab Emirates state news agency WAM said. Air India official Nambiar said the search for the flight data recorder was still going on.

 

The crash appeared to be an accident, Indian officials said. One TV report said the plane hit a radar pole on landing.

 

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

 

Indian officials said the plane crashed around 6 am local time (0030 GMT). TV images showed it struck a forested area, and flames blazed from the wreckage as rescue workers fought to bring the fire under control.

 

"While landing at the airport, the plane deviated and hit something," said Krishna, another survivor. "It caught fire and we fell out. We looked up and saw some opening and came out through that route."

 

BOOM INDUSTRY

 

India has seen a boom in private carriers due to growing demand from India's middle class. It was the first big crash in more than a decade but a series of near misses at airports, including Delhi and Mumbai, have caused concern India's creaking infrastructure was failing to keep pace with an economic boom.

 

Indian Law Minister Veerappa Moily told CNN-IBN TV that he had opened a new runway at Mangalore airport just 10 days ago. The ill-fated Air India airliner was two years old.

 

Boeing said in a statement it was sending a team to provide technical assistance to the crash investigation.

 

The last major crash in India was in July 2000 when an Alliance Air Boeing 737-200 crashed into a residential area during a second landing attempt in the eastern city of Patna, killing at least 50 people.

 

With growing competition from private carriers, the Indian government agreed to inject USD$1.1 billion into Air India if the ailing state-run carrier came up with the same amount in cost cuts and extra revenue.

 

The airline lost USD$875 million in the fiscal year ended March 2009.

 

(Reuters)

 

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India Crash To Spur Runway Safety Systems

 

May 23, 2010

 

The Indian air crash that killed 158 people at the weekend when an airliner plunged into a ravine may speed up calls for airports to invest in technology to save lives when planes overshoot the runway.

 

The disaster came four months after a potentially fatal crash was averted when a runway spillover system developed by a unit of French firm Zodiac prevented a jet from careering down a similar slope at Charleston, West Virginia.

 

The "EMAS" arrestor system was introduced last decade and is credited with capturing six planes which overran the runway including a Boeing 747 at New York's Kennedy airport.

 

It works by forcing a plane to slow down as its wheels churn up blocks of crushable, lightweight concrete in a safety zone set back from the end of a normal runway.

 

The concept sounds as simple as emergency gravel lanes designed to halt runaway trucks on steep roads, but is adapted to the weight and speed of an onrushing jet.

 

It took time to develop because the material needed to be fragile enough to break and provide resistance in an emergency but -- unlike gravel -- robust enough to allow access to fire trucks or tolerate the occasional wrong turn of a taxiing jet.

 

Experts stress it is too early to speculate on what caused Saturday's Air India Express crash at Mangalore or whether the EMAS system alone could have prevented the Boeing 737-800 shooting off the end of a table-top runway.

 

Reports say the runway had a safety zone of 90 metres including a bed of sand, which failed to halt the jet.

 

Regulators require a minimum runway spillover area of 90 metres (295 feet) but they also recommend 240 metres (788 feet) internationally and 1,000 feet in the United States.

 

EMAS is designed to cut these distances, for example where space is limited by a steep drop-off, water or wetlands.

 

Pilot unions have been pressing for tougher regulations including wider use of such systems after an Air France Airbus overran and caught fire at Toronto in 2005.

 

In the Charleston incident in January, a PSA Airlines Bombardier regional jet was ensnared in a bed of crushable concrete after aborting its take-off.

 

CATALYST FOR CHANGE

 

Minor "runway excursions" are relatively frequent and few attract notice, but overshooting the runway makes up a high proportion of those accidents that do cost lives, experts say.

 

"Accidents are rare in relative terms, but when they do happen, most are on approach and landing," said Paul Hayes, safety director at UK-based aviation consultancy Ascend.

 

Planes can overshoot a runway after approaching too fast, too high or without the proper configuration for landing.

 

According to Honeywell, these types of incident as well as runway incursions cost the industry USD$1 billion a year, presenting one of its worst safety headaches.

 

The turning point came on February 28, 1984, when a Scandinavian Airlines DC-10 slid off the runway after landing at New York's Kennedy Airport and came to rest in a shallow creek.

 

It was a lucky escape for the 163 passengers who evacuated on rafts or by climbing over wings, with only 1 serious injury.

 

But the accident at one of the world's busiest airports sparked research into new surfaces to deal with runway overruns.

 

In the 1990s the US Federal Aviation Administration issued a blueprint for an Engineered Materials Arresting System (EMAS), based on modern materials that would break up and halt a plane.

 

Experts say the FAA rejected sand as too unpredictable.

 

So far the only solution approved for use by the FAA was developed by ERSCO, a Zodiac subsidiary based in New Jersey.

 

But 14 years after EMAS was introduced, surprisingly few systems have been installed and almost none outside the US.

 

Manufacturer ESCO says it has installed 48 systems in the United States and two each in mainland China and Madrid. Taipei will see the next EMAS outside the US fitted later this year.

 

"It has taken longer to start up steadily outside the United States, but there is some interest," said Kent Thompson, vice president of airport engineering and sales said.

 

The principal barrier appears to be cost. Some experts also blame bureaucratic prevarication over rules for safety margins.

 

"The typical EMAS costs $USD5 million going up to USD$10 million or USD$12 million depending on the space. But that is small compared to the value of saving lives and aircraft," Thompson said.

 

The US Transportation Research Board estimates there are 18 "runway excursions" a year. Most are overruns on landing. Others happen when a plane aborts take-off or lands too early.

 

Besides safely capturing a plane on the ground once it overshoots, engineers are looking for ways to spot the dangers of such events happening even before the pilot touches down.

 

A Honeywell Aerospace executive said it had made a system to break the chain of events leading up to an overrun, giving pilots time to abort the landing and go around for another try.

 

"It is less than USD$30,000 for an upgrade; it's an option for airlines to choose," Vice-President Carl Esposito said.

 

(Reuters)

 

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Indian Air Crash Puts Focus On Infrastructure, Safety

 

May 23, 2010

 

An air crash in India that killed 158 people has underlined fears about safety gaps in the country's booming airline industry and raised doubts about whether infrastructure can keep pace with rapid economic growth.

 

It was not clear what caused Saturday's crash, but pilots and aviation experts say regulatory oversight of safety and quality control are often poor. Staff training standards are also falling, they say.

 

Although India has had few major accidents in recent years, some half a dozen mid-air misses over the past year has underscored that safety issues exist.

 

Last year an Indian Airlines plane with about 150 passengers on board barely avoided a collision with an army helicopter that was part of the Indian president's entourage in Mumbai.

 

Indian media regularly reports about routine checks finding pilots reporting drunk for duty and in one instance last year pilots and crew were involved in a mid-air scuffle, leaving the aircraft to fly on its own for sometime.

 

"The Air India Express crash was waiting to happen," said A. Ranganathan, an airline safety consultant and pilot instructor.

 

"Safety standards in Indian aviation have been on the wane for the last six years. Efforts being made to correct the drift, but the systematic rot is so deep... we are not likely to see any improvement in safety unless drastic changes are made."

 

Sustained robust growth has put more money in people's pockets, spurring air travel and an exponential growth in the number of low cost airlines. Domestic passenger traffic has tripled and international traffic doubled in the past five years.

 

But infrastructure may not have kept pace and a shortage of staff may be stretching both airlines and traffic control staff. Indian Commercial Pilot Association said in a statement 78 percent of crashes took place due to fatigue-related human error.

 

"You also need to augment the strength of air traffic control which is stretched," Kapil Kaul, head of the Centre for Asia-Pacific Aviation in South Asia said.

 

"DISASTER WAITING TO HAPPEN"

 

The hill-top airport at Mangalore, the site of Saturday's crash, had other geographical challenges, and critics say the runway, though adequate for landing the Boeing 737 that crashed, was not long or wide enough to leave any room for error.

 

"This was no accident, but the direct result of the deliberate failure of officials at the high levels," said a statement of Environment Support Group which had sought to block the construction of the runway.

 

While it was yet to be established if the accident was related to wider problems in India's aviation industry, experts say a lack of training, overworked staff and inadequate infrastructure only compounds the situation.

 

For instance, only seven radars serve Indian air space and only big airports have the latest low-visibility landing systems, a senior official of the Airports Authority of India said.

 

"A disaster was waiting to happen and we have been very lucky to have had no major accidents in the past 10 years," the official involved with aviation security said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.

 

In April 2008, then director general of civil aviation, Kanu Gohain, told the Mint newspaper that India had just three inspectors for 10 commercial airlines and 600 planes.

 

That number has now gone up, but many remain under-trained and a backlog of lapsed inspections may take years to clear.

 

A 2006 safety audit by the International Civil Aviation Organisation listed India as worst on "technical personnel qualification and training."

 

As the airline sector expanded, a shortage of pilots was met by hiring foreign pilots, some 565 of them flying now. But the government has ordered airlines to replace them with Indians by next summer, raising concerns about how the country will be able to produce enough qualified pilots so quickly.

 

There are also calls to make inquiries into air accidents transparent. "To my knowledge in the last 50 years no inquiry report has been made public," Kaul said. "There is also the need for an independent safety board."

 

(Reuters)

[flee 5]

Indian authorities recover FDR from crashed Air India Express 737

 

Indian authorities have found the flight data recorder of the Air India Express Boeing 737-800 that crashed at Mangalore International Airport on 22 May.

 

The FDR was handed to the air safety team of India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) today and will be taken to the DGCA headquarters in New Delhi, says the civil aviation ministry.

 

"[it] will be subjected to further tests for decoding and made available to the investigators," it adds.

 

An Air India spokesman says the FDR is "intact".

 

Investigators found the aircraft's cockpit voice recorder on 23 May, a day after the aircraft crashed and burst into flames when it overran the runway while landing at the airport in southern India.

 

The crash killed 158 people on board the aircraft, while eight survived.

 

Source: http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2010/05/25/342357/indian-authorities-recover-fdr-from-crashed-air-india-express.html

[Radzi 2]

A few things I would like to know.

 

1. What sort of approach was the aircraft doing?

 

2. What sort of duty pattern were the crew doing?

[Pieter C. 5]

Air India Cancels 40 Flights As Employees Strike

 

May 26, 2010

 

State run Air India cancelled more than 40 flights on its domestic network on Tuesday after its ground staff called a strike to protest against what it called a media gag issued by the management to employees.

 

"A section of ground employees of Air India have walked out of their assigned duty stations today," Air India said in a statement late on Tuesday.

 

"While flights from the major metro cities have not been affected, there have been a few dislocations at some of the non-metro airports."

 

Authorities have refused to comment on the reasons behind the walkout by employees.

 

But Dinakar Shetty, head of the Air Corporation Employees Union, representing most of the employees said they were protesting against a media gag order after an Air India Express aircraft crashed in the southern city of Mangalore.

 

The Air India Express aircraft, a budget carrier owned by Air India, crashed while landing at a "table-top" airport which overlooks a ravine, killing 158 people.

 

(Reuters)

[Pieter C. 5]

Strike In Crash-Hit India Drags, Woes Mount

 

May 26, 2010

 

A strike at Air India, the country's beleaguered national carrier, dragged into its second day on Wednesday and forced many flight cancellations days after one of its aircraft crashed killing 158 people.

 

At least 13,000 passengers were stranded because of the strike called by Air India's ground and technical staff who said they were protesting against a company "gag" order on union leaders speaking to reporters about Saturday's accident.

 

Air India spokesman K. Swaminathan said 76 flights, mostly domestic, had been cancelled. Flights to the United States, Britain, Tokyo, Hong Kong and other long-haul destinations were operating.

 

"Meetings have been scheduled some time later in the day," he said referring to talks between the management and the unions.

 

The striking employees said the "gag" order had also asked them not to speak about the airline's safety issues or staff problems. They said two of their leaders had been threatened with sacking for speaking to the media on these issues.

 

Vivek Rao, general secretary of Air Corp Employees Union, said that some 15,000 employees had joined the strike.

 

On Wednesday, hundreds of weary passengers were seen waiting for their flights at airports in New Delhi and Mumbai. Many complained of harassment.

 

"Nobody is listening to us, they just say flights are cancelled," said Ram Yadav, who was waiting to fly to Dubai. "They tell us that get this (refund) from where you bought the ticket. Now how can we get to Dubai?"

 

The ailing airline is expected to lose millions of rupees in refunds. The airline lost USD$875 million in the fiscal year ended March 2009.

 

An aircraft of the airline's budget arm Air India Express crashed while negotiating a tricky landing in southern India on Saturday, killing all but eight of the 166 people onboard in India's worst air disaster in a decade.

 

The reasons for the crash are not yet known and investigators were analysing the plane's flight data recorder.

 

(Reuters)

[KC Sim 2]

Sometimes, I get the feeling that soem airline staff are suicidal.

 

Airlines that are not doing well - indeed airlines that are on the brink of collapse or financial disasters such as Alitalia, Air India, British Airways etc - seem to have to contend with staff striking for all manners of reasons. Such action could only hasten an airline's migration to the history books.

 

Air India's standing within its home-based business community is nowhere near where a national airline should be ... and strikes such as this (and mind you, this isn't the first one in the last couple of years) will further erode its standing. Much to the delight of foreign carriers that operate to India and the few Indian carriers that could fly internationally. Meanwhile, the more vibrant start-ups such as IndiGo have to do their due diligence and wait to hit their 5th year of operation before they could even consider international expansion.

 

If JAL staff were to strike like this right now, JAL will go under. JAL will be shrinking dramatically (and it has been for about half a year already) in the coming months with the diasppearance of its entire dedicated cargo fleet as well as the B747s, A300-600s and MD-90 fleets. So hopefully, no strikes at JAL.

[Denny Yen 0]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Did-airlines-bar-on-hard-landings-force-a-pilot-error/articleshow/5963900.cms

 

Comments section:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/opinions/5963900.cms

 

Did airline's bar on hard landings force a pilot 'error'?

Manju V , TNN, May 23, 2010, 02.10am IST

 

MUMBAI: Air crash investigators worldwide share a belief that the initial reports on the probable cause of an aircrash usually turn out to be untrue.

 

The Air India Express top brass would do well to hope that this bit of industry wisdom holds true in the Mangalore aircrash case too since initial reports from aviation circles point at pilot error arising out of the management's highly controversial policies.

 

According to sources, the AI Express Boeing 737-800 aircraft touched down deep on runway 24 of Mangalore airport, much beyond the stipulated touchdown zone. Why would a senior commander miss the touchdown zone and hit the runway? Here's where the airline management's involvement comes in. There is a diktat for Air India Express pilots which bars hard landings. A circular issued by the airline about a year ago says that landings should not exceed 1.65G.

 

What is a 1.65G landing? When the undercarriage of a plane touches down on the runway, the sink rate goes from say 200 feet per minute to zero feet per minute in a few seconds. So for a higher sink rate, the impact on touchdown is greater and vice versa. A hard landing typically occurs when the sink rate is high and the aircraft touches down on the runway with a thud instead of doing a smooth transition onto ground.

 

The hard or smooth quotient of a landing is expressed in a term called "touchdown G". A 1G landing means the force which acted on aircraft tyres at the instant of touchdown is equivalent to the weight of the aircraft (1 x aircraft weight). A 2G landing would mean the force is two times the weight of the aircraft. Higher the value of G, harder the landing. The AI Express circular limits landings to 1.65G, though according to the aircraft manufacturer Boeing's specifications the aircraft can safely handle up to 2.5G landings.

 

"Every time a landing exceeds 1.65G, the pilot gets hauled up by the air safety department. Two hard landings and the pilot is sent for a training session. Passengers also complain about hard landings and so the airline is particular about smooth landings which are achieved with lower touchdown G values," said a source. Now, one of the ways to achieve a smooth touchdown is to come over the runway at a higher speed and float for some distance before letting the landing gear touch down on the runway. This reduces the G force on impact. "Pilots often land a few feet ahead of the touchdown zone when they float over the runway to make a smooth landing," said a source. "The AI Express commander too seems to have employed these tactics. His aircraft missed the touchdown point," the source added. What the commander executed was a late, smooth touchdown at high speed. "‘It is indeed pilot error, but it is an error that was forced by the management policy for smooth landings. A hard landing may be an uncomfortable landing, but sometimes it is a safer landing than a smooth landing," the source said.

 

Capt Z Glusica was popular among his first officers as he allowed them to do landings under his supervision. "Any commander with the kind of experience that Capt Glusica had can safely allow a first officer to land. But the AI Express air safety department is set against it. If a first officer never learns to land under the supervision of an experienced commander, how will he handle a situation if for instance the commander gets incapacitated?" asked the source. "Even if we assume that it was the first officer who touched down late then all that the commander had to do was do a go-around (i.e., take off again and come around for a second attempt at landing) and the aircraft would have landed safely," the official said.

 

A B737 aircraft can safely do a go-around after touchdown. But it cannot do a safe go-around if the decision to do a go-around is taken late or if it is taken after the reverse thrusters have been deployed (thrust in the opposite direction so as decelerate the aircraft). A go-around after thrust reversal selection is prohibited. "The airline policy is such that pilots try to avoid go-arounds as they have to explain it to the air safety department. A go-around infact is a highly recommended safety procedure when the touchdown is deep. But due to the airline diktat, the commander must have had a few microseconds of indecision after the aircraft touched down. So he seems to have either opted for the go-around late or he did it after deploying reverse thrusters. Since the go-around attempt failed, this is a plausible explanation," said the source.

 

There are unconfirmed reports that the plane's nose wheel burst after touchdown. It is difficult to bring an aircraft to a halt near the end of a runway as this portion bears aircraft skid marks and rubber desposits which affects braking action. When the plane attempted to lift off again the aircraft's wing hit the localiser (a T-shaped frangible antenna positioned perpendicular to the runway central line and located about 150 feet from the end of the runway) and then plunged into the valley. "Since the wreckage was well off the runway one can say that there seemed to have been an attempt to do a go around. Only investigations will reveal why did the attempt go wrong," says the source.

 

The pilots also brought in the fatigue angle to explain the wrong decisions taken by the pilot. "It does not matter how many days rest he got prior to these flights that he operated. He took off from Calicut on Friday night for Dubai and then came to Mangalore. The entire operation was done at night, during circadian low. His alertness level at the end of that 9-10 hour night duty surely would not have been very high," the pilot added. For the last three years, pilots of Air India, Indian Airlines and Jet Airways have been pushing for better pilot rest rules in India. Currently, the rest rules followed are the ones formulated in 1992.

Edited May 27, 2010 by Denny Yen

[Pieter C. 5]

Air India Employees Call Off Strike

 

May 26, 2010

 

A strike at Air India ended on Wednesday following a Delhi High Court order urging employees to resume duties and intervention by the government, officials said.

 

The two-day strike forced dozens of flight cancellations days after one of its aircraft crashed in southern India, killing 158 people.

 

At least 13,000 passengers were stranded because of the strike called by Air India's ground and technical staff, who said they were protesting against a company "gag" order on union leaders speaking to reporters about Saturday's accident.

 

The striking employees said the gag order had also asked them not to speak about the airline's safety issues or staff problems. They said two of their leaders had been threatened with dismissal for speaking to the media on these issues.

 

Employees called off the strike after meetings with the Chief Labour Commissioner (CLC) and the Delhi High Court's directive issued on Wednesday, asking employees to resume work as soon as possible, court officials said.

 

"In view of the court order and successful meetings with the CLC, we have decided to call off the strike," Vivek Rao, general secretary of Air Corp Employees Union, told reporters.

 

Air India spokesman K. Swaminathan said 76 flights were cancelled on Wednesday. Among them were 18 international flights to destinations including Singapore, Muscat, Abu Dhabi and Bangkok.

 

Flights to the United States, Britain, Tokyo, Hong Kong and other long-haul destinations were operating, he said.

 

Some 15,000 employees had joined the strike.

 

The ailing airline is expected to lose millions of rupees in refunds. The airline lost USD$875 million in the fiscal year ended March 2009.

 

An aircraft of the airline's budget arm Air India Express crashed while negotiating a tricky landing in the southern city of Mangalore on Saturday, killing all but eight of 166 people on board in India's worst air disaster in a decade.

 

The reasons for the crash are not yet known and investigators were analysing the plane's flight data recorder.

 

(Reuters)

[Naim 6]

***

 

OLD THREAD, but latest news ...

 

 

===

 

Sleepy pilot caused Indian passenger plane crash

AFP

 

Investigators inspect the wreckage of the destroyed Air India plane which crashed in Mangalore killing …

– 1 hr 58 mins ago

 

NEW DELHI (AFP) – A sleepy pilot who approached the runway at the wrong angle and ignored warning signs was to blame for a passenger plane crash in southern India in May that claimed 158 lives, reports said Wednesday.

 

A Court of Inquiry probe concluded the Air India pilot Zlatko Glusica, from Serbia, was asleep for much of the three-hour flight and was "disorientated" when the plane started to descend, the Hindustan Times reported.

 

The low-cost Air India Express plane flying from Dubai to the city of Mangalore overshot the runway, plunged into a gorge and burst into flames. Eight people survived the inferno.

 

The official crash report, which has not been released publicly, was submitted to the civil aviation ministry on Tuesday.

 

Voice recordings picked up the co-pilot saying: "We don't have runway left," seconds before the disaster.

 

Most of the dead were migrant workers returning from the Gulf where many Indians from southern states find low-paid employment as construction workers or domestic staff in cities such as Dubai.

 

The six-member court was set up to investigate the cause of India's first major air crash since 2000 and its worst aviation disaster since 1996, when two jets collided in mid-air over New Delhi, killing nearly 350 people.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101117/wl_sthasia_afp/indiaairaccident

Edited November 17, 2010 by Naim

[Radzi 2]

So, do we blame the pilots, or the company that roster them to do flights at such hours?

[alberttky 0]

Some pilots suffer from sleep disorders e.g. sleep apnea. They think they're getting sleep but they're not entering deep sleep, so they are wasting their time on the bed every night thinking they've had enough rest.