Air India Express Crashes at Mangalore Airport

Guys, since I live in Mangalore, I have been flying in / out thru Mangalore airport since 1995, many times a year. Have seen both the runways. Yes, the earlier runway (the shorter one) was a bit scary a couple of times. But, the new one, I have always felt very safe. I have never seen a pilot using more than 60 - 70% of the length for landing. Yes, they go till the other end only to take a turn. I have landed under heavy rains many times. But, have not felt jittery sitting inside the airplane. In fact, I have seen a pilot using just about 50% of shorter runway, when it was raining once.

It is too early to blame the airport or the pilots. Let the experts find the reasons and come out with their conclusions. Let's not get biased by the media. I was watching the news networks on Saturday for some time. I really don't know how some of them were concluding it as pilot errors and some were talking about airport issues. They were talking like our politicians, especially, that guy on Times Now. Knowing the place much better than any one of them, listening to many of their statements was making me sick and finally switched the TV off.

The worst ever experience I had was in Logan airport (Boston) in the middle of the night on 31st Jan 1997 (or was it 1996.. don't remember now...), which I'm sure, will be having equal or better specification than all required standards. There was a snow storm and the visibility was Zero. In this airport, the runway starts at the edge of sea. Our pilot almost landed a bit early, but, before touch down, he realized and took off again. If he had touched down, it would have been in the sea at sub zero temperature and I wouldn't have been writing this note.. It was the split second decision that Pilot took that saved all of us who were in that flight. Certainly, there was no room for pilot error at that specific instance, if we had touched down.

While my heart goes out for those who lost their beloved ones on Saturday, I still feel the airport is safe enough and I will continue to use this airport. Still, if they had chosen some better place, it would have been nicer. I hope situation will keep on improving over a period of time.
 
yeah, there will be all sorts of theories floated around till we get the information from the FDR and the CVR. But one thing's for sure, a table top runway which is not particularly long, and without a huge RESA, they should have an approach radar in place. But this is India, you need disasters to wake people up.

Another disaster waiting to happen is Chennai airport. Believe it or not, it does not have a ground radar. Apron control relies on visual identification to monitor various aircraft on the airfield. In a busy airport like Chennai that's too high a risk. The worst air accident in history could have been prevented if the Tenerife airport had had a ground radar (it now does). The babus will say Chennai never gets fog....but I've seen fog in Chennai, I've seen heavy rain. There was a near miss on the ground last year involving an Emirates aircraft.

So all it needs is for a deadly enough set of circumstances to line up, and then suddenly everyone will be "shocked" that Chennai airport did not have a ground radar. Try bringing it up now and everyone will laugh.
 
Another disaster waiting to happen is Chennai airport. Believe it or not, it does not have a ground radar. Apron control relies on visual identification to monitor various aircraft on the airfield. In a busy airport like Chennai that's too high a risk. The worst air accident in history could have been prevented if the Tenerife airport had had a ground radar (it now does). The babus will say Chennai never gets fog....but I've seen fog in Chennai, I've seen heavy rain. There was a near miss on the ground last year involving an Emirates aircraft.

Here I was thinking that Chennai airport was relatively safe:sad: Few years ago, while waiting to board my flight to Muscat, the flight was delayed by 4 hours because of heavy fog early in the morning.

So all it needs is for a deadly enough set of circumstances to line up, and then suddenly everyone will be "shocked" that Chennai airport did not have a ground radar. Try bringing it up now and everyone will laugh.

Apart from gritting our teeth in anger, is there anything else we can do? I mean it seriously and not as another open ended poser.
 
The Pilot was a Serb or an Ukranian or something. The Times news reader could not even pronounce his name. Why the hell, when we have so many Indian Pilots without jobs, do we employ these people from third world countries?

@ Venkat

Its strange to hear such words from a veteran member like you. 1st of all if Times News reader cannot pronounce his name whats the big deal.

And is it really fair to blame the pilot when the cause of crash is still UNKNOWN? Didnt he loose his own life too?

And whats the guarantee that Indian pilots would never do a mistake? Its the skill of the person which is of importance not from where he belongs (third world country) in this case as you said.
 
there are about more than 1468000 individual parts in a 737 - failure of any one of the critical components is good enough for a crash. A aircraft is a machine and a sum of parts and a critical component malfunctioning is rare but not somethign that does not happen rarely and often these issues are not reported to the media.


AirDisaster.Com: Investigations: Air France 296 (exampe, where reports are tampered, systems performing randomly).

It is a rule is aviation industry amongst pilots in case of a plane crash:
1. if the everyone survices a disaster, make him a hero
2. If people die and pilot survives - make him a scapegoat
3. if everyone dies - blame the pilot again - the machine is never held at fault.

Did anyone notice with low cost airlines (well I studied low cost airlines and their operations way back in 2004-05 when Air Deccan was brinign in a revolution in the industry) - the turnaround time for routine maintainance is 15-20 mins at airports because of the model adopted of flight instead of the hub and spoke model that was prevelant earlier and gave longer times for routine maintainance activities. This fact can be disputed as for 90-95% of the time 15-20 mins is enough but what about that 5%.

It is said this is a world ruled by statistcs:
1. Wallstreet loses money - 70bn USD pumped in - no one knows where the money went. Markets that tanked almost recovered but did the problems go away. This problem persisit but the media does nto play it up
2. 1-5 crashes in a year globally is not enough hence companies and authorities and Indian babus get away scott free - no one died amongst their kin
3. Kasab wen ton a killing spree that was recorded on tape, the trial wen tfor over 1.5 years and now God only knows when the final act happens. So statictics show this act may be repeated.

These above may be out of context but the fact remains that is no point speculating the reason for the crash. May God bless the poor souls and let HIM give the people who lost thier dear ones the strength to surive and deal with the pain.

Moderators please close the thread - speculation has no limit.

PS: Some statistics for plane crashes

Accident statistics
Death in the Atlantic: The Last Four Minutes of Air France Flight 447 - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International
 
Hi,
Regarding this particular disaster lets just wait and watch what is revealed from the black box. I have no issue with getting pilots from anywhere as long as they are competent and this Pilot was very experienced. I will not be surprised if the data shows that there was a failure of a critical device which may have been detected in 'a proper pre flight inspection'

The problem in our country is always the 'chalta hai' attitude. Road safety, air safety, construction, health services,national security,...................... Just goes on. WE WAIT FOR A TRAGEDY TO OCCUR TO DO SOMETHING THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE AGES AGO.

Rgds
 
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I am yet again shooting an arrow in the dark .... as pointed out in my last message, I still think it HAS to be the wheel brake failure since it has been reported that the aircraft ploughed on to the edge at a moderate speed and tumbled on to the jungle area.

Lets wait for the flight data recorder to be de-coded. In case it is the wheel brakes, then obviously it has to be the 'chalta hai' attitude that is to be blamed.
 
suprateep;139561 [url=http://www.airdisaster.com/investigations/af296/af296.shtml said:
AirDisaster.Com: Investigations: Air France 296[/url] (exampe, where reports are tampered, systems performing randomly).

The info as presented on the page is worse than what happens in India or "what Indians do" - which so many people will readily jump and curse!

Great link, thanks for posting!

Cheers
 
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