Investigators are still searching through the charred wreckage of an Indian passenger plane that overshot the runway and plunged into a ravine, killing 158 people on board. Unconfirmed reports say that they have recovered the the "black box", which records fight information, and should shed light on the cause of the crash and the last moments of the plane.
Officials said the crash occurred at 6.05am when the Boeing 737-800 landed about 2,000 feet down the 8,000-foot (2,440-metre) runway, much farther than it should have, and pitched into a valley beyond the end of the runway. The crash killed 158 people.
However, DS Raghavan, president of the Indian Air Traffic Controllers' Guild, said there was still plenty of space to land safely. Abdallah Puttur Ismail was one of a handful of survivors from the crash that killed 158 people, many of them UAE residents. He vividly remembers the wheels of Air India Express Flight 812 touching down on the runway at Mangalore International Airport early yesterday. But within seconds, he said, he heard an explosion. Moments later, the "flight started falling". He said he was still strapped into his seat in Row 19 as he witnessed the right-hand side of the plane start to rip apart. A fire erupted beneath his feet. "All I could see was the plane breaking. It broke in the middle and I decided I had to jump out. From the broken, middle side of the plane, I jumped out." The pilot had sent no distress signal before overshooting the mark, he added, and although rain had reduced visibility, he did not believe that weather was a factor in the accident.
"It was as normal as any other aircraft landing but this aircraft landed some 2,000 feet beyond the normal landing point," said Mr Raghavan. "But they still had enough distance to stop. Normal landing clearance was given." By late last night, the emergency services had pulled all 158 bodies from the charred wreckage. Investigators were still searching for the plane's flight recorder and cockpit voice recorder.
Among the dead were the cockpit crew, Capt Z Glusica, a Serbian, and the co-pilot, Capt HS Ahuwalia from India. Four other senior cabin crew members were also on-board. None was on the list of survivors. Only eight people survived what was India's deadliest air disaster in more than a decade. One was in critical condition, two were in serious condition, four had minor injuries and one was unhurt.
India's minister for Civil Aviation, Praful Patel, who flew to the site, said the pilot was a "very experienced" aviator who had logged 10,000 hours of flying time. Stressing that it was "too early" to determine the cause of the crash, Mr Patel noted that the sanded safety area surrounding the runway in the event of an overshoot was shorter than at some airports. "It does not have much of a spillover area and, in this case, apparently it had not been able to stop the plane," he said.
Air India said that the plane was two and half years old. All of the passengers - 23 of whom were children - were Indian citizens. For Dr Sathya Narayana Ballakuraya and his wife Sujatha Rao, it was to be a homecoming - they were travelling to Mangalore for their 25th wedding anniversary. Their son, Sooraj, who remained in the southern Indian city to study engineering, had hoped to return with them to Fujairah - where Dr Ballakuraya works at the National Medical Centre - for the summer, according to family members in Sharjah.
But as word spread that the early-morning flight from Dubai had crashed and scores were missing and feared dead, distraught family members in India and the UAE began frantically scouring the news channels for information. Raghvendra Upadhyaya, a nephew of Dr Ballakuraya and his wife, first heard of the crash from a distraught relative in India and quickly called the airport for more information. "They had given a name of survivors but their names are not there," he said yesterday afternoon from the front room of his Sharjah apartment, where he, his wife and children continued to wait for more news. "Their names are on the flight manifest, though."
Akshay Bolar, 15, had received his Grade 12 results on Friday and was excited to begin his college life in India. However, before heading to university in Pune, Akshay, his mother, Ashitha, and grandmother, Prabhavati Karkera, took a detour to Mangalore to attend a wedding. After receiving news of the crash, Akshay's father, Prakash, and sister Puja, rushed to Dubai airport and took the first flight to Calicut.
Ashwin Salian, a relative of the family in Sharjah, said they had identified Akshay's body but were still looking for his mother and grandmother. Thomas Mathew, the principal of Our Own English High School for Boys in Sharjah, where Akshay studied, said: "This has been a tragedy of huge proportions. The sorrow is difficult to explain. All teachers here were in close contact with him due to his extra-curricular activities and friendliness."
CL Nizar and his wife woke up yesterday morning to news that they had both lost cousins travelling to India for separate weddings. Mr Nizar's wife's cousin, Fathima Mehzan Shafqat, was travelling with her son Rashaad, an infant, to nearby Kasaragod. Mr Nizar's cousin, Abdul Hakeem Perumbala Mohammed, a pharmacist in Al Ain, was travelling with his friend, Anwar Sadiq, to Mr Sadiq's sister's wedding.
"We have confirmed he is no more," he said. "In Mangalore, my relatives confirmed his physical remains. His friend also did not survive. "More than 75 per cent of the people on that plane were from Kasaragod. This is very, very tragic." pmenon@thenational.ae sbhattacharya@thenational.ae loatway@thenational.ae * With reporting from Hannah Gardner in Delhi, Matt Chung and Ramola Talwar
