Kairpur : The Director General of Civil Aviation(DGCA) has deployed its team from Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau(AAIB) early morning Saturday, to investigate what caused Air India Express Flight 1344 to overshoot the runway and crash into the gorge below on the Friday night at Karipur airport in Kozhikode. The sleuths have on hand two black boxes, digital data recorder and cockpit voice recorders retrieved from the debris of the plane that split into two from impact in the crash.
The team recorded heavy rains and high winds as likely causes in their preliminary report however, investigators are looking closer into pilot actions to get a clearer picture of what possibly went wrong, in his second attempt at landing at the strip. Pilot Captain, a veteran IAF flier, circled the airport once, then one more time and radioed the control tower to switch runways owing to bad visibility. In this second attempt that came late, he hit Runway No. 10, landing nearly 800 m into the 2.5 km strip.
18 people including pilot Capt Deepak Sathe, former Wing Commander of IAF, and co-pilot Capt Akhilesh were killed in the crash. The aircraft, with 190 people on board from Dubai was part of Vande Bharat Mission fetching expats from abroad amid lockdown conditions.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan reached the crash site along with governor Arif Mohammad the morning after the crash and visited those under treatment in Kozhikode Medical college. 149 persons remain in hospital, 23 of whom are said to be in critical condition. CM announced Rs 10 lakh in interim relief to kin of each deceased and took up on government, all medical costs toward treatment for those injured. The Union Minister for Civil Aviation Hardeep Singh Puri and experts team headed by Air India Chairman Rajeev Basil also arrived at the site.
