The suspension of operation of wide-bodied aircraft will continue at the Calicut International Airport till a five-member team of the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), probing the Air India Express crash at the airport last month, submits its report and provides recommendations to avoid such accidents in the future.
Sources said that the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has asked the airport authorities to temporarily stop the services of big aircraft of Air India and Saudia (Saudi Arabian Airlines) until further notification.
The team led by Captain S.S. Chahar has been given a period of five months to finish the investigation. Until then, all wide-bodied aircraft will be rerouted to the Kochi airport.
The Boeing 737-800 Air India Express flight 1344 involved in the accident was a narrow- body aircraft that was part of the Vande Bharat Mission to bring back Indian nationals stranded in Dubai due to the pandemic. A combination of factors, including the torrential rain, was believed to have led to the crash that claimed the lives of 20 people and left more than 100 passengers injured, many of them critically.
K. Mohammed Shahid, Joint General Manager, Air Traffic Management, has submitted a report on the accident to the Airports Authority of India. Teams from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and Boeing are assisting the AAIB in its probe.
The Calicut airport, which has a tabletop runway, has been designated as a critical airport along with Leh, Kullu, Shimla, Port Blair, Agartala, Lengpui, Mangalore, Jammu, Patna and Latur airports. It has been licensed for use in instrument flight rules and airlines companies have to ensure that pilots operating flights during the night have sufficient experience in terms of flying hours as well as experience of day operation at the airport.
Previously, the operation of wide-bodied aircraft was banned at the Calicut airport from May 2015 after the Court of Inquiry report on the Air India Express Boeing 737 crash in Mangaluru in May 2010. However, the DGCA allowed the resumption of wide-bodied aircraft operations at the airport in August 2018 with stringent conditions after airline companies submitted a safety and compatibility study.
