MANGALORE, India — Eight people escaped the crash of an Indian jetliner that overshot a hilltop runway early Saturday in southern India and plunged over a cliff, officials said.
The immediate cause of the accident appeared to be pilot error: The Boeing 737 overshot the runway where it was landing in Mangalore, one of India’s trickiest airports.
The plane, arriving from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, struck a concrete navigational aid, Aviation Minister Praful Patel said at a news conference at the airport. At least some of the survivors managed to jump from the plane just before it burst into flames.
Firefighters struggled to reach the twisted, smoking wreckage, which was scattered along the hillside of thick grass and trees just outside Mangalore’s Bajpe airport. But after the first few minutes, there were no more survivors to be found.
Ummer Farook Mohammed, a survivor burned on his face and hands, said it felt like a tire burst after the plane landed. “There was a loud bang, and the plane caught fire,” he said.
“The plane shook with vibrations and split into two,” G.K. Pradeep, another survivor, told CNN-IBN television.
He jumped out of the aircraft with four others into a pit, he said. Moments later, a large explosion set off a blaze that consumed the wreckage, he said.
The plane was carrying 160 passengers — all Indian — and six crew members, said Air India official Anup Srivastava. Four infants and 19 other children were among the passengers. The British pilot, of Serbian origin, and an Indian co-pilot were among the dead, officials said.
Employees of JAT Airways, the Serbian national carrier, identified the captain as Zlatko Glusica, 55, a Serb with a British passport who had been flying for Air India for the past three years. He had previously flown for JAT. The JAT employees spoke on condition they not be identified.
Patel said that conversations with the cockpit and other records showed the flight was operating normally before the touchdown. The crash was the deadliest in India since the November 1996 midair collision between a Saudi airliner and a Kazakh cargo plane near New Delhi that killed 349 people.
Aviation experts said the “tabletop” runway, which ends in a valley, makes a bad crash inevitable when a plane does not stop in time.
Accidents of this type, known as “runway excursions,” are fairly common, though the majority end without injury or damage.
The New York Times contributed to this report.
