The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau investigated the accidents of 7 August 2000 and 22 May 2010.
Raising some concerns about aviation safety, clear parallels have been found between the Air India Express B737-800 plane crash at Calicut airport on August 7, 2000, and the Air India Express crash at Mangaluru airport on May 22, 2010.
In its final investigation report, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), which probed the accident, said that all actionable recommendations of the Court of Inquiry (CoI) in the Mangaluru incident were implemented. “However, the investigative team found that some of the main recommendations have not been fully addressed,” it said.
In the last 10 years, Air India Express has had two major accidents and several non-fatal accidents or serious incidents. Most of the accidents were a result of the continuance of unsteady approach and the complete disregard for repeated calls to ‘Go Around’ from the First Officer, both of which were serious violations of Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). The report said that this resulted in a long landing in which the aircraft was unable to stop on the runway and ended up during the journey.
The probable cause of the Calicut airport accident was non-compliance of SOP by the Pilot Flying (PF), who continued a steady approach and landed halfway down the runway, beyond the touchdown zone, despite a ‘go around’. Call by Pilot Monitoring (PM). In this accident 21 people including both the pilots were killed and 75 passengers were seriously injured.
In the case of the Air India Express accident at Mangaluru, the pilot failed to close an ‘unstable approach’ and continued with the landing despite three calls to ‘Go Around’ from the first officer and several warnings from the Enhanced Ground. Proximity warning system. This accident took the lives of 158 people.
With regard to Crew Resource Management (CRM), AAIB observed that the persistence of training for First Officers did not yield any qualitative results. The ‘vertical cockpit authorization shield’ seems to be poorly managed. In addition, Type Rating Instructors and Designated Examiners were not rostered as Observers for CRM monitoring on flights as recommended by the COI.
Also, the CRM training of Air India Express was weak. Thus the senior captain of the company does not encourage a working environment in the cockpit where a junior pilot is confident enough to raise concerns, make decisions and offer solutions.
crew scheduling
On crew scheduling, it said not enough crews were permanently based to conduct uninterrupted operations at all bases. One case was the Calicut airport where despite the maximum number of Air India Express flights operating out of the base, only one captain was posted against 26 first officers.
Thus the PF was rostered for the flight scheduled for the next day. At any point of the Air India Express flight, the PF would have been placed within the flight duty time limit and would not be available to operate the next day’s flight. The PF knew that there was no additional Captain at that base other than himself to operate that flight.
Therefore, the PF made a false impetus for itself (to be available for the next day’s flight) and did not divert even after the aircraft’s wipers were found unusable during the first approach and pressed to land during the second approach. Gaya (as another ‘missed approach’ would have left them with no option but to divert), the AAIB report said.
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