The probe report of the Kozhikode plane crash has revealed that the pilot was in a hurry to return to Kozhikode as he had to operate a flight to Doha the next morning.
“There was only one Captain against 26 First Officers on the posted strength at Kozhikode. The pilot was on standby duty the next day but due to the non-availability of Captains at Kozhikode, he was assigned the Doha flight for August 8”, the probe report said. According to the report, the events of AXB 1344 crash replicated the Mangalore crash of 2010. “Ten years later, on 7 August, 2020, it was once again a similar tabletop aerodrome, the same airline, the same type of aircraft that landed off an ‘un-stabilised approach’ and touched down past half the runway and resulted in another major disaster”.
The report said that the pilot’s actions and decisions were “steered by a misplaced motivation” to land back in Kozhikode to operate a flight to Doha the next morning. The unavailability of a sufficient number of Captains at Kozhikode was the result of Air India Express Limited’s (AIXL) faulty human resource policy which does not take into account operational requirements while assigning a permanent base to its Captains,” the report said.
These are among the findings of the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) report that delved into the accident on August 7 last year when the Boeing 737-800 aircraft overshot the table top runway and fell to a depth of about 110 feet below the runway elevation and broke into three pieces. Two pilots and 19 passengers, including three infants, lost their lives as the plane coming from Dubai with a total of 190 people on board crashed.
“This last-minute assignment of eighth morning flight to Doha put additional pressure on the pilot in command (PIC) to land back at Kozhikode in time on seventh evening,” the report added. Had the flight been diverted, the pilot would have exceeded his Flight Duty Time Limitation and would not have been available for the morning flight.
The probe report also pointed out that due to low visibility and “suboptimal performance” of windshield wiper in the rain, the pilot probably experienced visual illusions causing errors in distance and depth perception.
Noting that in the last ten years, AIXL had two major accidents and a number of non-fatal accident/serious incidents, the AAIB said most of them were a result of continuation of unstabilised approach and total disregard to the repeated calls from the First Officer to “Go Around”, both being serious breach of Standard Operating Procedures.
Among other aspects, the probe report has flagged that AIXL did not have provision for child/infant restraint system and they rely solely on lap-held infants without any supplemental restraint. Out of the ten infants on board, three sustained fatal injuries, three had serious injuries and four escaped unhurt. The cockpit voice recorder recording revealed that the pilot carried out an unusually detailed briefing of an experienced flight officer regarding windshield wipers. The transcript points out that the pilot was perhaps apprehensive about the reliability of the windshield wiper, the report said.