Bajpe Air Crash on Black Saturday : Rear Black Box found on Tuesday Morning

            25.05.10 Mangalore : The digital flight data recording (FDR) otherwise known as the Black Box, kept in the tail of the crashed Air India Express Plane, was found after 3 days of intense search on Tuesday morning. The Cockpit (front seat) talk recorder is already found on Saturday. The FDR was blackened by fire and smoke. The place where it was found is kept secret and the contents are on way to Delhi for analysis, a relieved team of searching officials of Civil Aviation in Bajpe and the police helping them have informed pressmen. Other requirements to get at the basic reason for the crash are obtained.

             It is not yet clear whether air traffic controllers lost touch with the foreign pilot who was landing the aircraft at an excess speed at a point more than half the way leaving no chance for the plane to stop on the runway. When it overshot the runway while brakes were being desperately applied, there was an emergency situation, with passengers flung around inside the aircraft and air belts fastened round some of them could not be loosened for such persons to run out and escape. By that 2 minutes time the plane plunged into an abyss, shook violently and was covered with smoke and fire. People started shouting for help but onlookers were too scared to go near as there was an explosion and a blanket of Death in the valley. The complacency continues despite 158 deaths and shame on AI. “It will take a couple of weeks” to analyze the cockpit and digital FDR, said a probe official in a news service talk.

             For records it must be stated that the local reached the hot spot within 45 minutes after Control Room was contacted at 6-02 a.m. on the black Saturday by a Muslim observer of the crash. The being 737-300 plane had overshot the runway of 5000 meters.

             The Congress local leader, B. Janardana Poojary, who supervised Kenjaru Terminal Work 2 years ago, said Bajpe needed a longer runway to contain a speeding Boeing aircraft, of about 550 meters with walls around. One cannot tell the Boeing leave the runway during descent from the sky.

             In all 166 persons were in, 158 died, 8 survived, one of them an infant. 23 kids were burnt to death.