“The probable cause of the accident was the pilot’s failure to comply with standard operating procedures,” says the report from the Aviation Accident Investigation Bureau, a division of the Ministry of Aviation. Civilian who probes plane crashes.
The pilot “continued an unstabilized approach and landed beyond the contact area, halfway down the runway,” instead of making a “turn,” according to the agency in the 257-page report, published after a one year research.
A run is a standard procedure in which the pilot abandons a landing attempt considered unsafe and retries.
Although the pilot overseeing the landing asked him to fly it, the pilot who flew the plane did not, the agency said, and the surveillance pilot also did not take over the controls and run the order.
The plane had already made a failed attempt to land before overcoming the 2,700-meter (8,900-foot) runway. The airport is known as a desktop table because its runways have heavy falls at one or both ends.
The crash at Kozhikode Airport was the worst passenger plane crash in India since 2010, when another Air India Express flight from Dubai overtook a runway in Mangalore, a city from the south, and slid down a hill and killed 158 people.