The wind speed at the Mumbai airport on Saturday evening when an Indigo flight from Chandigarh skidded off the runway was a very gentle 6-8 knots per hour, Mumbai Mirror has learned.
This is contradictory to the pilot’s claim that a sudden gust led to the incident where flight 6E 433 skidded off the runway twice, endangering the lives of 150 passengers and crew.
The pilot had initially tried to hide the matter, not reporting it to the authorities as mandated by civil aviation guidelines.
Mirror accessed the wind speed from the airport radar readings and the Meteorological Aviation Report (METAR) from the Indian Meteorological Department’s instruments at the airport. METAR is a weather-reporting format universally used by pilots.
Sources in the Aerodrome Meteorological Department said that even small aircraft can safely land in wind speeds of 8 knots/hour. Warnings for small and light aircraft are usually issued only when the wind speed exceeds 17 knots/hour.
13/03/13 Aditya Anand/Mumbai Mirror
