Human error feared as cause of deadly Indian aircraft crash
Source: Agencies |
May 25, 2010, Tuesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
HUMAN error might have caused the crash of an Air India Boeing 737-800 plane that killed 158 people over the weekend, India's civil aviation minister said yesterday.
Weather conditions and other factors at the time the plane reached its destination "looked absolutely normal for a regular touchdown and a safe landing," Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel told the CNN-IBN TV news channel.
"You can't rule out a human error factor," Patel said.
Only an inquiry could establish what exactly went wrong as the aircraft overshot the hilltop runway and crashed and plunged over a cliff and into a ravine at dawn on Saturday on the outskirts of the southern city of Mangalore, he said.
Of the 166 passengers and crew aboard, only eight people survived the crash.
Investigators and aviation officials searched through the wreckage of the Boeing 737-800 strewn across a hillside to try to determine the cause of India's worst air disaster in more than a decade.
They found the cockpit voice recorder, which they hope will give them vital clues.
A four-member United States forensic team had arrived to help in the investigation, said Harpreet Singh, an Air India spokeswoman.
By Sunday night, 146 of the 158 bodies were identified and given to relatives for burial or cremation, said Arvind Jadhav, Air India's chairman and managing director.
Doctors were conducting DNA tests on 22 bodies that were so badly burned that relatives could not identify them, said Suresh Babu, an official at Wenlock Hospital in Mangalore. They included a two-year-old boy.
In the nearby village of Uppala, the relatives of brothers Mohammed Basheer and Aboo Backer Siddeeq were told it could take more than a week for the bodies of the two men to be identified, said their uncle B.K. Mohammed Haji.
"For two days we waited at the airport for the bodies," said Haji. "All the bodies were badly charred and very difficult to recognize."
The two men were returning home from Dubai for the wedding of their younger sister on Sunday.
The wedding was canceled and instead friends and relatives joined the family under a canopy erected for nuptials to pray for the dead men.
Aviation experts said the eight survivors were seated in the center of the aircraft, near where it broke open, and they managed to get out before a fireball engulfed the plane.
"In this case it was pure luck of the draw," said Sidney Dekker, a professor of flight safety at the School of Aviation at Sweden's Lund University.
Weather conditions and other factors at the time the plane reached its destination "looked absolutely normal for a regular touchdown and a safe landing," Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel told the CNN-IBN TV news channel.
"You can't rule out a human error factor," Patel said.
Only an inquiry could establish what exactly went wrong as the aircraft overshot the hilltop runway and crashed and plunged over a cliff and into a ravine at dawn on Saturday on the outskirts of the southern city of Mangalore, he said.
Of the 166 passengers and crew aboard, only eight people survived the crash.
Investigators and aviation officials searched through the wreckage of the Boeing 737-800 strewn across a hillside to try to determine the cause of India's worst air disaster in more than a decade.
They found the cockpit voice recorder, which they hope will give them vital clues.
A four-member United States forensic team had arrived to help in the investigation, said Harpreet Singh, an Air India spokeswoman.
By Sunday night, 146 of the 158 bodies were identified and given to relatives for burial or cremation, said Arvind Jadhav, Air India's chairman and managing director.
Doctors were conducting DNA tests on 22 bodies that were so badly burned that relatives could not identify them, said Suresh Babu, an official at Wenlock Hospital in Mangalore. They included a two-year-old boy.
In the nearby village of Uppala, the relatives of brothers Mohammed Basheer and Aboo Backer Siddeeq were told it could take more than a week for the bodies of the two men to be identified, said their uncle B.K. Mohammed Haji.
"For two days we waited at the airport for the bodies," said Haji. "All the bodies were badly charred and very difficult to recognize."
The two men were returning home from Dubai for the wedding of their younger sister on Sunday.
The wedding was canceled and instead friends and relatives joined the family under a canopy erected for nuptials to pray for the dead men.
Aviation experts said the eight survivors were seated in the center of the aircraft, near where it broke open, and they managed to get out before a fireball engulfed the plane.
"In this case it was pure luck of the draw," said Sidney Dekker, a professor of flight safety at the School of Aviation at Sweden's Lund University.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
