Mangalore crash report gets runway wrong

Mumbai: The Air India Express air crash investigation team appears unaware of which of the two runways in the Mangalore airport is runway 24, the one on which the ill-fated Boeing 737 aircraft had crash-landed on May 22 killing 158 passengers and crew.
The ministry of civil aviation recently released the initial report submitted by the court of inquiry formed to investigate the Mangalore crash. The report, which has been uploaded on ministry of civil aviation's website, has the most embarrassing mistake that an air-crash investigation team must have ever made. It carries a picture of Mangalore airport's runways and wrongly shows runway 27 as runway 24.
The AI Boeing 737 had landed on runway 24 and then overshot it falling into a gorge. The investigation team has erroneously shown the crash site at the end of the other runway (runway 27). The aircraft did not land on this runway. The accompanying caption says, "runway 24 of Mangalore airport", but a picture of runway 27 is carried and the actual crash site, which is at the end of runway 24, is not even seen in that picture. TOI has carried the picture released by the investigation team and an another one which shows the actual site of the crash.
Getting the runway and the crash site wrong is such a serious mistake that it casts a doubt on the quality of the investigation report that will finally emerge. "It reflects how casual the Investigation team has taken the crash that cost 158 lives," said Capt A Ranganathan, an air safety expert.
09/07/10 Manju V/Times of India

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