From the Newsroom: Air India Express flight crash and situation on ground and more

In this bonus episode of From the Newsroom by DH Radio, we look at the situation on the ground at Karipur airport, Malappuram, Kerala, relief efforts, dangers of a tabletop runway, bad weather in Kerala, Munnar landslides and how Covid-19 has affected relief efforts at the airport.

Excerpts:

Arjun Raghunath: Rescue operations were over last night itself and right now we know that out of the 190 passengers and crew, 18 are dead and 122 were injured, out of the 122 injured, Malappuram district collector Gopalakrishnan said that around 10 were critical. The number of casualties can go up further. Otherwise, on the other side, the investigation into the incident is already on, the collector said in the morning that the focus is on relief activities.

Akash: Can you tell us what the sequence of events was before the incident and after?

Arjun: The crash happened at 19:41 on Friday evening. What we could understand is that over the past few days there was bad weather. It was heavily raining and Malappuram is one of the districts where a red alert was issued by the weather department. The weather conditions were not favourable. What we could gather is that it took some time to land. The pilot delayed the landing because of inclement weather and visibility issues. One thing I came to know in the morning is that there are two runways, runways 10 and 28. The initial plan was to use runway 28, but later the pilot used runway 10 for landing. What made him do that, what made him take that decision would be a crucial factor in the investigation. At around 1941, the first responders were the firefighting units at the airport as well as local people and NDRF teams came later. The flight actually hit the boundary wall of the airport. So, local people were not allowed to enter the premises due to security reasons and because there were chances of an explosion and the aircraft catching fire. Later, the district authorities allowed them. District collector K Gopalakrishnan coordinated the rescue efforts. Though this is Calicut airport, it is actually situated in Malappuram district but hospitals and other facilities are situated close to Kozhikode. Collector K Gopalakrishnan who did good work, coordinated with all hospitals, rescue agencies, even NDRF was put into action. Immediately, in around 30-35 ambulances arrived at the spot in 10-15 minutes. Patients were shifted to around 10 hospitals in Kozhikode and Malappuram districts. Anyway, rescue operations were finished without many hurdles. The casualties in the Mangalore accident in 2010, the numbers almost resemble this accident in Karipur yesterday. Both Mangalore and Karipur are table-top airports. Rescue operations went on quite well. There were two passengers stuck in the tail portion of the aircraft and there was some fuel leak, because of which there were some delays in the rescue operations.

Akash: Did the topography of a table-top airport hamper the rescue operations in any manner?

Arjun: I don't think it affected the rescue operations much. But the question is whether the condition of the airport, whether table-top runways are ideal or not. Because earlier also, there were issues with landing at airport that were reported. I don't think the table-top structure of the runway affected rescue operations.

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