At least 19 persons including pilot Captain Deepak Sathe and co-pilot Akhilesh Kumar died after Air India Express from Dubai overshot the runway at Karipur airport and nosedived into a valley, before splitting into two pieces on Friday night.
The aircraft with 190 people on board was attempting to land in bad weather around 7.40pm. “Visibility was 2000 metres and there was heavy rain,” DGCA said in its statement.
Now, data from flight tracking website ‘Flightradar’ shows that the aircraft had attempted to land twice on runway 10. The website which tracks aircrafts on real time has data which reveals the flight was taking loops around the aircraft before the final landing.
As fire tenders and ambulances rushed to the spot, the locals were one of the firsts to offer their help in rescuing the injured. People were seen queuing up at midnight to donate blood to the injured passengers.
Kerala Governor Arif Mohammad Khan and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan are likely to visit Karipur today. Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri is also expected to visit the accident site.
The Karipur airport has a tabletop runway carved on a hilltop. The runway is surrounded by deep gorges on both sides, making it difficult for the pilots to land as there is no margin for overshooting the runway.