Pilot error likely in fatal Dubai-Kerala Air India Express crash, report finds

Twenty-one people died when a Boeing 737 overshot the table-top runway at Calicut airport and crashed

A photo made available by the Indian Civil Defense shows the wreckage. EPA/Civil Defence

An injured passenger is wheeled into Medical College Hospital in Calicut after an Air India Express flight skidded off the runway while landing at Kozhikode International Airport. AP Photo

Rows of ambulances are seen outside the airport where a passenger plane crashed. Reuters

Indian news agency ANI shared these images from the crash site, which showed the Air India Express plane split in two close to Kozhikode-Calicut International Airport. ANI 

Images from India's ANI news agency show a damaged Air India Express plane that crashed close to the runway at Kozhikode International Airport. ANI / Reuters

Images from India's ANI news agency show a damaged Air India Express plane that crashed close to the runway at Kozhikode International Airport. ANI / Reuters

Officials inspect the wreckage site of a plane crash. EPA/Civil Defence

The Air India Express flight that skidded off a runway. AP

Pilot error and a failure to follow safety guidelines probably caused the Air India Express crash that killed 21 people last year, the country's worst aviation accident in a decade, Indian investigators said in a report.

The Boeing 737, repatriating Indians in Dubai due to the coronavirus pandemic, overshot the table-top runway and crashed while landing at Calicut International Airport in the southern state of Kerala in heavy rain on August 8, 2020.

"The probable cause of the accident was the non-adherence to standard operating procedures by the pilot flying," says the report by the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, a division of the Ministry of Civil Aviation that probes plane accidents.

The pilot "continued an unstabilised approach and landed beyond the touchdown zone, halfway down the runway", instead of doing a "go around", the agency says in the 257-page report, published after a year-long investigation.

A go-around is a standard procedure in which the pilot abandons a landing attempt deemed unsafe and tries again.

In spite of being asked to go around by the pilot monitoring the landing, the pilot flying the aircraft failed to do so, the agency said, and the monitoring pilot also failed to take over the controls and execute the order.

The aircraft had already made one failed attempt to land before it overran the 2,700-metre (8,900-foot) runway. The airport is known as a table-top because its runways have steep drops at one or both ends.

The crash at the airport in Kozhikode was India's worst passenger aircraft accident since 2010, when another Air India Express flight from Dubai overshot a table-top runway in Mangalore, a city in the south, and slid down a hill, killing 158 people.