Black box of crashed AIE flight recovered, toll rises to 18
Kozhikode/New Delhi: The black box of the ill-fated Air India Express flight that could throw light on how it overshot the runway here and crashed has been recovered while the toll in the mishap rose to 18 on Saturday with a passenger succumbing to injuries, officials said.
Hours after the AIE flight from Dubai with 190 people on board overshot the tabletop runway at the airport here while landing in heavy rains and fell into a gorge 35 feet below and broke into two portions on Friday night, investigations into the cause of the mishap are underway with top officials of the airlines and aviation regulator DGCA rushing here.
Civil Aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri also arrived here to take stock of the situation.
"Digital Flight Data Recorder (DFDR) and Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) of the ill-fated aircraft have been retrieved. AAIB (Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau) is conducting investigations," Puri tweeted.
The minister said he would hold consultations "with senior civil aviation officials and professionals", adding reasons for the mishap were being investigated.
An official of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said the DFDR and CVR are with the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau and will be sent to Delhi for further investigation.
Puri announced Rs 10 lakh interim relief for each of the deceased, Rs 2 lakh for the seriously injured and Rs 50,000 for those who suffered minor injuries.
Malappuram District Collector K Gopalakrishnan said one more passenger succumbed to injuries, taking the toll to 18. The condition of 16 passengers among 149 those admitted to various hospitals, was serious, he said. The bodies of the pilot and co-pilot were handed over to their families on Saturday.
Amid the tragedy, Coronavirus scare too surfaced with samples of one of the passengers who died in the mishap testing positive for the pathogen with state Health Minister K K Shailaja asking all those engaged in the rescue operations to go on self-quarantine as a precautionary measure and get themselves tested.
Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan, who arrived here on Saturday morning from New Delhi on the directive of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was briefed by the officials of Air India and Airport Authority of India (AAI) on the accident that claimed the lives of both the pilots.
It emerged that the aviation regulator had issued a show-cause notice to the director of the Kozhikode airport on July 11 last year after it found "various critical safety lapses".
The DCGA had pointed to cracks on the runway, water stagnation and excessive rubber deposits among other lapses in its show-cause notice, an official said.
