What caused Air India Express flight crash in Kerala? Investigators to find via found black box
New Delhi : The investigators from Civil Aviation Ministry's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) have found the black box of Air India Express flight that crashed on Friday evening while landing at the Kozhikode airport.
They will retrieve the last conversations with the pilots to understand the cause of accident in which 18 people were killed. Both the pilot and co-pilot were also killed.
The black box and cockpit voice recorder were recovered from the floorboard of the cockpit and have been sent to Delhi for decoding and analysis.
On Saturday, the officials from AAIB, DGCA and Air India reached the crash site to take stock of situation.
A senior official investigating the matter claimed that it is too early to say anything over the cause of accident.
"All crashes are caused by multiple contributory factors and here preliminary info shows wrong landing due to bad weather as a reason. The about 8,000-foot-long runway of the airport is sufficient for a Boeing 737 to land but it is learnt that the aircraft landed 3,000 feet off. What exactly happened will be clear only after checking the flight history and ATC-pilot communications," Times of India quoted an official.
Civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri, who visited the crash site on Saturday morning, told reporters, "Let’s not speculate on the cause(s), contributing factors of the crash, and wait for the result of the investigation. We were fortunate that unlike the tragic accident at Mangaluru airport 10 years ago, where the aircraft caught fire, here preventive action minimised the loss of lives."
The Air India Express airplane, operating under Vande Bharat Mission, had overshot the tabletop runway to plunge into a valley. The body of the aircraft was broken into two pieces.
