Mangalore air crash: All bodies recovered

Mangalore air crash: All bodies recovered



Mangalore, May 23: Air India (AI) on Sunday said that all the 158 bodies
have been recovered from the crash site and 87 bodies have already been
handed over to relatives.


"All
the 158 bodies have been recovered from the crash site," said AI
spokesperson Harpreet Singh De.



"We have deputed one
person from our emergency management to assist the relatives at
Mangalore," De added.

She also said that investigations by the
DGCA and Air India's flight safety department were on and the Black Box
of the crashed aircraft is yet to be recovered.

The Black Box is a
plane's digital flight data recorder that helps in facilitating the
investigation of an aircraft accident.

Earlier, Civil Aviation
Minister Praful Patel, who had arrived here to access the situation
following the crash of the Air India Express Flight from Dubai to
Mangalore, said the plane overshot the runway, and there was no defect
in it.

"The two pilots had over 10,000 hours of flying
experience. The pilots were experienced and familiar with the terrain,"
Patel told reporters.

"The runway visibility stood at six
kilometers when the incident took place. The visibility was normal.

The
ATC signal was also clear," he added.

The Air India Boeing
737-800, carrying 160 passengers and a crew of six, overshot a runway
and crashed in flames near Mangalore in which 158 were killed. There
were only eight survivors from the flight that came in from Dubai.

This
is the first major plane crash in India since 2000.