While the AIE flight crash at Kozhikode international airport triggered concerns over the safety of the tabletop runway, especially citing similar incidents earlier, an enquiry report into a 2017 incident at the same runway did not point out any fault with the runway despite it being wet.
Excessive rudder input by the pilot to bring the aircraft on the runway centre line was found to be the cause for the 2017 incident, according to DGCA's enquiry report published last month.
It was on August 4, 2017, almost exactly three years ahead of the present crash on August 7, that a Spice Jet flight from Chennai to Kozhikode with 70 passengers and five crew veered off to the right after touchdown. There were no casualties.
Compared to the present flight crash in which Boeing 737-800 aircraft was involved, the 2017 incident involved a smaller aircraft, 70-seater Bombardier Q-400.
However, a striking similarity between the two incidents was that the in both the cases the flight's initial plan was to land on runway 28 but later opted runway 10 as requested by the pilot. There was moderate rain and runway surface condition was wet. Though an under-training pilot was planned to fly the entire sector, in view of the rain pilot in command decided to carry out the landing.
The incident took place during the morning hours. After touch down the flight veered off to the right and the right wheel entered the soft-land and rolled for around 245 metres, while left wheel rolled over runway shoulder, damaging five runway edge lights. Later the aircraft entered the runway and came to complete stop. The aircraft had also sustained minor damages.
According to the report, the probable cause of the incident is excessive rudder input by the pilot to bring the aircraft on the runway centre line. "Unstabilised approach coupled with non-adherence to standard callouts by pilot monitoring was the contributory factor to the incident," it said.
It recommended that the airline may be instructed to issue a circular to emphasize the use of standard callouts and check during annual refresher.