Mangalore Air Crash: Pilot Did Not Heed Warnings

New Delhi, Nov 16 (PTI): Flight commander of the Air Indian Express which crashed in Mangalore claiming the lives of 158 people in May this year ignored the warnings given by his co-pilot not to land, an inquiry committee said today.

In its report submitted to the Civil Aviation Ministry, the committee said flight commander Captain Zlatko Glusica did not heed the warnings given by the co-pilot Capt H S Ahluwalia for taking "a go-around" and not to land, official sources told PTI here.

The two-year-old aircraft had crashed outside Mangalore airport in Karnataka on May 22, killing 158 people when it burst into flames after overshooting a table-top runway and plunged into a nearby forest .

The pilot also did not take-off in time and the aircraft had rammed into the boundary-wall of the table-top runway before falling into the deep gorge on the other side of the airport, they said.

Data retrieved from the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) of the ill-fated Boeing 737 aircraft had shown that the captain was on the wrong flight path and had also delayed in taking corrective measures despite being requested by his co-pilot for "a go-around".

The 2.05 minutes of CVR recording has indicated that despite being warned by the aircraft computers to "pull up, the captain had not paid any heed. He also ignored the co-pilot telling him to go-around.

The last few seconds of the recording clearly says "we don't have runway left" after which the CVR has recorded the loud crashing sound. While deposing before the Court of Inquiry, Boeing officials had said that the pilot was not on the right glide path while approaching the Mangalore airport.

He had approached for landing at an angle more than three degrees which is the standard procedure, the officials submitted. They also found some anomalies in the captain's way of taking corrective measures which could have averted the accident.