Aviation experts raise questions over air safety norms

Founder President of the Federation of Indian Pilots Captain M R Wadia said that successive governments in the country have been stressing on having independent air safety boards to prevent accidents but the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) till date doesn't have any such mechanism in place.

Referring to the bad weather over the Mangalore airport, Air Force's former flight safety in-charge Air Marshal A K Singh (retd) said, "I don't know whether Air India has any policy akin to that of international airlines, which encourages pilots to deviate from their route even if the weather is marginally bad but here we could see the weather was rough and it had rained there."

On the aircraft over-shooting the runway by 200 metres, he said, "Airlines in India ask the pilots to carry out smooth landings and to do so, the pilots have to let the aircraft sail along the runway for some time which results in loss of 200 to 300 metres for the aircraft."

Former DGCA Kaanu Gohain said the aircraft had overshot the runway by 200 metres and "it is too early to arrive at conclusions but the fact is that the aircraft had overshot the runway, which is 8038 feet long."

As many as 160 persons were feared dead when an Air India Express flight from Dubai with 173 on board crashed and caught fire today as it overshot the newly built runway while landing at the Mangalore airport.