Investigators found that pilot error and failure to follow safety guidelines were likely the primary reasons behind the air crash incident that killed 21 people last year.
The Air India Express crash is considered to be the worst aviation incident in India in the last decade.
The flight took off from Dubai repatriating stranded Indian nationals due ro the pandemic. The flight overshot the runway and crashed while landing at Calicut International Airport last August 8, 2020.
“The probable cause of the accident was the non-adherence to standard operating procedures by the pilot flying,”a report from the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, a division of the Ministry of Civil Aviation in a report on CNN.
The pilot continued an unstabilized approach and landed beyond the touchdown zone, halfway down the runway rather than a go-around caused the crash.
A go-around is a standard procedure in which the pilot abandons a landing attempt that is considered unsafe and tries again.
The co-pilot told the other pilot to go-around but insisted on flying the aircraft. The co-pilot also failed to take control of the aircraft.
A similar incident happened at Mangalore India when an aircraft from Dubai overshot the runway in 2010 killing 158 people on board.
