The probable cause of the Air India Express plane crash at Kozhikode airport on August 7 last year, which left 19 passengers and two pilots dead, was non-adherence to standard operating procedure by the pilot flying the aircraft, a government report stated.
The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau on Saturday submitted the report to the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA).
"Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau found in its investigation that the aircraft overran the runway including the Runway End Safety Area, impacted the localiser antenna, approach light, and fell off the tabletop runway," the report said. "The impact with the perimeter road caused the aircraft to break into three sections. There was a fuel leak from both the wing tanks. There was no post-impact fire," it added.
The report stated that the pilot continued an "unstabilized approach and landed beyond the touchdown zone".
"Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau in its report to MoCA said that the probable cause of the accident of the Kozhikode Air India Express flight was the non-adherence to SOP by the Pilot flying," the report said. "He continued an unstabilized approach and landed beyond the touchdown zone, halfway down the runway, in spite of the ‘Go Around’ call by Pilot Monitoring which warranted a mandatory ‘Go Around’, and failure of the Pilot Monitoring totake over controls and execute a ‘Go Around’," it added.
For the uninitiated, an Air India Express flight from Dubai carrying 191 passengers and crew skidded off a wet table-top runway while landing at Kozhikode airport in Kerala in August last year and crashed into a ravine, breaking into two and leaving 21 people dead and several critically injured.
