Pilot fell asleep, Indian plane crash report says

Wed, 17 Nov 2010

New Delhi - The pilot in command of an Air India Express flight that crashed in southern India in May was sleepy and ignored warnings by his co-pilot, news reports said Wednesday.

Flight 812 from Dubai overshot the tricky table-top runway while attempting to land at Mangalore and crashed into a gorge, killing all but eight of the 166 people on board.

An investigation concluded the crash was caused by pilot error, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported. The report has been submitted to the Ministry of Civil Aviation but not yet been public.

It said Serbia-born pilot Zlatko Glusica was asleep during more than half of the three-hour flight and was "disoriented" when the aircraft began its descent, the Hindustan Times quoted government sources as saying.

An analysis of the cockpit voice recorder and the digital flight data recorder revealed a long silence, heavy breathing and snoring, the report said.

The voice recorder also picked up warnings by co-pilot HS Ahluwalia that there was not enough runway space. Ahluwalia asked Glusica to abort the landing and go around, the report said.

It said the aircraft touched down when it had already crossed 1,500 meters of the 2,400-meter runway. The pilot reacted late and did not follow several standard operating procedures, the report concluded.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/353892,indian-plane-crash-says.html.