Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) chief Arun Kumar quashed reports stating friction testing was not done at the Karipur Airport in Kozhikode.
Speaking about the Air India Express flight crash that killed 18 persons and injured several more, he said on August 8: “It is incorrect that friction testing was not done”.
Junking reports stating friction tests were not conducted on the runway, he said: “That’s not correct. It is more than 50.69.72.63, which is considered good.”
According to a CNN-News18 report, he said that the August 7 plane accident might have been the result of a bad judgement call. Kumar added: “There was poor judgement of pilots while landing, the runway was long enough for a safe landing.”
Explaining why he believes so, the DGCA chief said: “Once your touchdown point is almost 40 percent of the runway that you’ve covered and you are floating for a couple of seconds and then you touchdown. And thereafter you are at high speed. So, it is likely that you’ll go beyond the runway. Now after it you have the runway and the safety area, which is also fairly big, 240m cross 90m. They had crossed that. And beyond that, they have gone further 10 ft.”
The Air India flight returning from Dubai had 190 people on board. The two pilots manning the fateful Air India Express flight that skid off the runway while landing at Calicut International Airport were among the 18 people who died in the Kozhikode accident.
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