Air India plane crashed near manglore airport

8:10 PM kkdoultani

India plane crash: human error 'could be to blame'

India's civil aviation minister has said that a human error might have caused the crash of an Air India Boeing 737-800 plane that killed 158 people over the weekend.


Locals crowd around the remains of the Air India Express plane that crashed in Man-galore, in the southern Indian state of Karnataka.

Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel told the CNN-IBN television news channel said weather conditions and other factors at time the plane reached its destination "looked absolutely normal for a regular touchdown and a safe landing."

"You can't rule out a human error factor," Patel said.

Only an inquiry could establish what exactly went wrong as the aircraft overshot the hilltop runway and crashed and plunged over a cliff and into a ravine at dawn Saturday on the outskirts of the southern Indian city of Mangalore, he said.

Of the 166 passengers and crew aboard, only eight people survived the crash.

Mr Patel said there was no rain in the area and visibility was good at the time of the plane's landing.

Investigators and aviation officials searched through the wreckage of the Boeing 737-800 strewn across a hillside to try to determine the cause of India's worst air disaster in more than a decade. They recovered the cockpit voice recorder which they hope will give them important clues, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

A four-member US forensic team also arrived in India to help in the investigation, said Harpreet Singh, an Air India spokesman.

By Sunday evening, 146 of the 158 bodies had been identified and handed to grieving relatives for burial, said Arvind Jadhav, Air India's chairman and managing director.

Doctors were conducting DNA tests on 22 bodies that were so badly burned that relatives could not identify them, said Suresh Babu, an official at Wenlock hospital in Mangalore. They included a 2-year-old boy.

The black box would be sent to New Delhi for decoding and further investigations, officials said.


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Libyan Plane Crash Kills 103, Child Survives

3:21 PM kkdoultani
A Libyan airliner with 104 people on board has crashed during landing at Tripoli's airport. At least 103 people have been confirmed killed, with a young Dutch boy the only known survivor. More than half the passengers are believed to have been from the Netherlands.

The African Airways plane was arriving from Johannesburg, South Africa, and is believed to have crashed just short of the runway.

The Libyan-owned airline says 93 passengers and 11 crew members were on board flight 771 as it attempted to land.

A Libyan official says a young Dutch boy who was the lone survivor did not have life threatening injuries.

Libyan media showed wreckage of the plane spread over a wide field, with rescue and emergency workers on the scene.


Officials say they have already recovered the flight's voice recorder, which may give information on the cause of the crash. Weather is not believed to be a factor. Witnesses say they did not see any fire before the plane broke apart. Authorities announced an investigation is under way, but initially ruled out a terrorist attack.

In Johannesburg, a spokeswoman for the Airports Company South Africa, Unathi Batyashe-Fillis, said the company had no confirmation on what caused the crash.

"What we do know is that the airline left last night at 2137 [1937 GMT] for Tripoli. It was scheduled to arrive in Tripoli at 6 o'clock [0400 GMT]," she said. "We don't know where the communication failure happened, but what we can confirm is that 104 passengers and crew were on board at the time."

African said its crew members were Libyan. Officials in South Africa reported most aboard the flight had planned to make a connection in Tripoli and fly on to various destinations in Europe. Crisis centers have been set up in both Johannesburg and Tripoli.

The airline maintains an Airbus fleet and had previously maintained a good safety record.
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