Wayne Farley's Aviation Blog - Air Traffic Management

Despite the loss of lives and damage to property following aviation accidents, air transport remains one of the safest modes of transportation. The catastrophic Air India crash on May 22, 2010 was the worst aviation accident in the last decade for India. Was this the result of human error?
According to news reports, the Air India Boeing 737 aircraft departed from Dubai, United Arab Emirates without incident on its way to Mangalore, India. There was no report from the flight crew of any problems while enroute and weather conditions were reported as good at the time. While attempting to land in Mangalore, the aircraft overshot the runway causing the plane to hit a barrier wall and plunged into a valley. The crash killed 158 of the 166 people on board. Experts have found the “black box” which will help to determine what went wrong in the final moments before the crash.

Details of the last conversation between the pilot and the Air Traffic Control suggest there was absolute calm right before the disaster struck. At Mangalore airport, reports revealed that the wind was calm, there was no rain, and perfect conditions for landing as the aircraft made its final approach. Here’s the communication between ATC and Air India 812 in the final moments of the flight:

ATC: confirm establish on ILS

IX 812: establish on ILS

ATC: Report 5 DME

IX 812: Roger 5 DME

ATC: Express India 812 cleared to land runway 24… wind calm

IX 812: Roger, cleared to land

ATC: Express India 812 landed 0032… backtrack at the end of runway… vacate runway via taxiway delta (no acknowledgment from the pilot).

Runway 06/24 is the second and newest of the runways at the Mangalore airport. It was commissioned in 2006 and has an overall length of 2450m (8000 feet) and also features Runway End Safety Areas (Resas) of 60m length each.

The pilot-in-command, Zlatko Glusica, is a British pilot of Serbian origin and early reports indicate that he may have tried to abort the landing and attempted take off again from the runway as the throttle of the Boeing 737-800 was found in the forward position.
Despite advances in technology and aviation safety, sadly, accidents still do occur. Statistics have shown that most accidents are the result of human error or mechanical failure. With all the automated systems for flying and monitoring the aircraft systems, pilots are still responsible for safely landing and taking-off the aircraft. These are the two most critical phases of flight, and there is very little room for human error here.
It may be weeks or months before we know what caused the crash of the Air India Flight 812, the first major aircraft accident in India since an Alliance Air Boeing-737 crashed into a residential area near the eastern city of Patna on July 17, 2000, killing 61 people.
India’s worst aviation accident ever occurred on November 12, 1996, when 349 people were killed in a mid-air collision between a Saudi Arabian Airlines plane and a Kazakhastan Airlines plane over northern India.