Mangalore: A Month After - No Report on AIE Crash
Mangalore, Jun 22 (TOI): Even a month after Air India Express IX 812 crashed at Mangalore airport killing 158 passengers and crew members, several important questions remain unanswered. The civil aviation ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) are not keen on releasing a preliminary investigation report. It points to a lack in transparency in the system. TOI chalks out a list of five questions which need to be answered:
Why doesn’t India have a practice of releasing a preliminary investigation report after an aircrash?
The Digital Flight Data Recorder (DFDR) can be downloaded in 15 days and the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) can be decoded in a couple of hours. Both of these were retrieved just days after the Mangalore crash. A court of inquiry headed by Air Marshal Bhushan Nilkanth Gokhale, former vice-chief of air staff, and four others will investigate and submit the findings by August 31. According to sources, the inquiry team sought a deadline extension and it has been granted.
The last airline aircrash investigation report to be released in India was that of Alliance Air Patna aircrash in 2000. After three years, a page-long investigation report stating pilot-error as the cause of crash was released.
Why doesn’t the investigating team have a single official who is an expert on the particular aircraft?
The aircraft which crashed was from Boeing 737 Next Generation series. Airline accident probe in India are always handled by IAF officials, who are not familiar with civilian aircraft types. Of the four investigators, Capt Ron Nagar is the only expert with experience in civilian aircraft. The country does not have an independent agency like US’s National Transportation Safety Board or the UK’s Accident Investigation Board.
Why was Mangalore airport’s only radar, the Air Route Surveillance Radar (RSR), kept off?
Why did the Mangalore airport authorities need 72 hours to carry out monsoon maintenance work on the Westinghouse RSR when the same is done in 12 hours in airports such as Chennai and Guwahati, which have a similar radar from the said company? If the radar has been on, the controller could have seen the aircraft’s height and if it was high on approach, the radar controller would have warned the pilot for altitude correction.
Why was an outsider (a villager) and not an air traffic controller, the first person to inform the police?
Air traffic controllers are trained for emergency response, but manpower shortage makes it impossible for the controllers to inform 20 other units within the desirable 5-10 minutes of the accident. How long did the fire tenders take to reach the scene?
Why is Air India still following lower ‘G’ limits for landing, even after DGCA has issued a circular to all airline operators to maintain Aircraft Maintenance Manual (AMM) limits for landing?
Weeks after the tragedy, the DGCA issued a circular stating that pilots need to be made aware that achieving a particular G-value (vertical acceleration due to gravity on touchdown) is no measure of a good landing. Landings should be judged not by how soft the landing has been, but if it has been made at the correct speed and touchdown zone on the runway.
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