EXPERTS INVESTIGATING the cause of India’s worst air disaster in more than a decade in which 158 people died at the weekend, have recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the mangled and charred remains of the wreckage in the southern coastal town of Mangalore.
Air India’s Boeing 737-800 flight from Dubai overshot the hilltop runway at Mangalore’s Bajpe airport early Saturday morning and plunged over a cliff breaking into two before catching fire, killing 158 people including 23 children and 29 women on board.
The victims also included 16 family members of a Saudi Arabia-based businessmen travelling to India to attend their grandmother’s funeral.
Mohammed Siddiqui (27), who boarded the ill-fated flight in Dubai within hours of being told by his family in nearby Kerala state of his father’s sudden death, perished in the crash.
He was travelling to attend the funeral but now his family is mourning his death also.
Air India officials said 146 of the 158 bodies had been identified and were in the process of being handed over to their relatives for burial and cremation.
But eight people, most of them sitting in middle seats of various rows in the economy section, miraculously survived by jumping from the wreckage seconds before it burst into flames around 6am local time.
They indicated that the Boeing 737 seemed to violently hit something – possibly a pylon somewhere close to the runway – as it prepared to touch down and careered out of control before crashing into a deep gorge and bursting into flames.
Ummer Farook Mohammed, burned on his face and hands, said it also felt that one of the aircraft’s tyres burst soon after it landed after which it lurched violently.
“There was a loud bang and the plane caught fire,” he told television channels from his hospital bed in Mangalore.
“The plane shook with vibrations and split into two,” said GK Pradeep, another survivor who along with four others jumped off the stricken Boeing airliner before it crashed.
Moments later, a large explosion set off a blaze that consumed the wreckage, he said.
Many of the other survivors had similar tales of their fortuitous escape.
Aviation experts said the airport’s “table top” runway, which ends in a valley, makes a bad crash inevitable when an incoming aircraft does not stop in time.
Officials said investigators used cutters to search for the two black box recorders in the twisted wreckage of the aircraft which was scattered along the hillside amid thick grass and trees.
Civil aviation officials said there was no distress signal from the pilot, an expatriate and experienced Serbian who had earlier negotiated the challenging approach to the airport.
His co-pilot too was also an experienced flier. India’s air safety record has been relatively good over the past decade, despite the rapid proliferation of private airlines and boom in travel.
The last major crash took place in the eastern city of Patna in July 2000 in which 50 people died.