Flight to doom:: New Age Xtra

This article was originally published in New Age Xtra on May 28, 2010

Flight to doom

Syed Tashfin Chowdhury

While the world was shocked to read and watch the Air India (AI) Crash news on the online news sites and on the television throughout the entire day of May 22, some bloggers shared the final tweet of 17-year-old Harshini Punja who had boarded the ill-fated Air India Flight IX-892 with her parents the previous night from UAE to attend a wedding in India.

Around 158 people, including Harshini and her parents, died in the plane crash while only eight survived of the total 166 on board. The plane skidded off the hilltop runway at the Bajpe airport in Mangalore after heavy rainfall around 6:30am.

Although the charred bodies of her parents, Manirekha Punja and Shashikant, were identified by relatives, Harshini’s body was yet to be identified while this piece is being written. Harshini’s final tweet: ‘At the airport and blah =_= Only thing to look forward to is the rain’ says a lot but the fact that she was totally unprepared for the final flight of her life.

Although Air India authorities have mentioned following the accident that the chief pilot, of Serbian nationality, was very experienced with a log of 10,000 hours of flying time and the plane did not have any ‘flaws’ when inspected prior to the flight, the reasons behind the accident is still being sought after by concerned people all over the world. While a group of Boeing officials are yet to begin their investigation at the crash site and the black box of the plane has been recovered by the Indian civil aviation authorities, the accident has once again brought about the question of susceptibility of such flights to adverse weather conditions and whether safety measures are being ensured by private and public airline authorities prior to flights.

The crash is the worst plane accident in India’s airplane history after the mid-air collision of a Saudi airliner and a Kazakh cargo plane near New Delhi on November 1996 that killed 349 people.

Despite being the tenth commercial airliner crash this year, it undoubtedly has the most casualties. Flight 771 of Afriqiyah Airways comes a close second with 104 people perishing on board the flight and a nine-year-old Dutch boy being the only survivor after it crashed on approach to Tripoli International Airport on May 12.

The joint investigation by the Libyan Civil Aviation Authority, Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la Sécurité de l'Aviation Civile (BEA) and the South African civil aviation authority deduced that sand and mist that created a low visibility could have been the reason behind the crash. The flight data recorder is still being reviewed by the authorities.

Similarly, the two pilots and six passengers on a Blue Wing Airlines flight on an Antonov An-28 plane lost their lives when it crashed around three miles north-east of Poketi, Suriname on May 15. The plane had experienced bad weather a few minutes after taking to air.

Extreme weather conditions like snow is also presumed to be the causes behind the crash of the Pamir Airways Flight 112 that claimed the lives of all 39 passengers and five crew members after flying from Kunduz Airport and was scheduled to land at Kabul International Airport at Afghanistan. All contact with the plane was lost ten minutes after it took off and the wreckage was found 100 km north of the Kabul International airport.

The passengers of the Trigana Air service Flight 168, from Berau Airport to Temindung Airport in Indonesia on February 11, were more fortunate as the double engine malfunction of the ATR-42 plane was identified soon enough. Although the pilot wanted to divert to Sepingann International Airport, the plane was eventually landed on a nearby field with no casualties and minor injuries on two passengers.

There have also been numerous cases of ‘human errors’ that caused plane wrecks over the years.

Russian investigators accounted the plane crash on April 10, which claimed the life of the Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 96 others, to ‘human error’. Instead of forwarding the plane to Minsk due to adverse weather conditions as advised by flight controllers, the pilot and crew independently decided to land the plane in Smolensk.

‘According to preliminary reports, the plane got caught up in the tops of trees, fell to the ground and broke up into pieces,’ said Sergei Antufiev, Smolensk regional governor, to the media following the accident.

Iranian Minister of Road and Transportation Hamid Behbahani also blamed ‘human error’ behind the crash of a Taban Airlines flight on January 24 as it caught fire while trying to land at Mashhad Airport. Luckily, the 46 passengers on board suffered minor injuries.

The reason behind the latest Air India Express crash is yet to be found as the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and the flight data recorder (FDR) has been recovered already. Flight officials have already informed that while landing conditions were fair with good visibility, they did not receive any distress calls from the cockpit.

‘The preliminary observation is that although the aircraft touched down, it did not contain itself within the runway space,’ said Praful Patel, the Indian Civil Aviation Minister, who flew to the crash site on May 22. ‘While it is too early to determine the precise cause of the crash, the airport does not seem to have much of a spill-over area that is supposed to prevent a crash in the event of an overshoot,’ he said.

Omar Faruq, one of the eight survivors of the accident, provided the chilling details of the tragedy from his hospital bed. With burns on his arms, legs and feet, Omar mentioned that the problem began immediately after the plane had touched down.

‘The plane veered off toward some trees on the side and then the cabin filled with smoke. I got caught in some cables but managed to scramble out,’ he said to Indian television channels.

Sabrina Nasrin Huq, a Bangladeshi national based in the UAE, was also one of the survivors. After hearing the news, her parents flew to Mangalore where Sabrina is still undergoing treatment.

While wishing the best for the lost lives and their families, the people of the world can only pray that such tragedies are avoided in the future through extensive last minute checks and more calculated and risk-minimising human and pilot decisions.