Captain Deepak Vasant Sathe, one of the pilots of the Air India Express flight with 191 passengers on board which skidded off the runway while landing at Kerala’s Kozhikode on Friday evening has been killed in the accident. His co-pilot Akhilesh Kumar is critically injured.
Captain Sathe is from the 58th course of the National Defence Academy.
Preliminary images from the accident site showed the aircraft split into two pieces with debris all over the runway and beyond. At least, 40 passengers are believed to be injured and have been admitted in hospital, according to initial reports.
After landing at Runway 10, the plane continued running to the end of the runway and fell down the valley and broke into two portions, a statement from aviation regulator DGCA said.
The Air India Express flight AXB1344, B737 from Dubai to Calicut was part of the Vande Bharat Mission, meant to bring home stranded people from other countries amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
The aircraft was about to land at the Karipur Airport in Kozhikode.when it overshot the runway, and broke into pieces. The incident took place amid very heavy rainfall and bad weather in the area. There were 191 passengers, including crew members on board the flight.The passengers included 10 infants, two pilots, and four cabin crew members.
The flight landed at the airport at around 7.40 pm.
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