Repatriation flights from Gulf resume at India’s Calicut airport after crash

Normal air services to and from Calicut International Airport in south India resume, after being disrupted following the crash of an Air India Express Boeing 737 from Dubai, with the completion of follow up operations to the incident.

The Air India Express plane, which was repatriating Indians stranded in Dubai due to the coronavirus pandemic, overshot the runway of the Calicut airport in heavy rain near the city of Kozhikode, killing 18 people in the country’s worst aviation accident in a decade.

The aircraft fell into a valley and broke in half.

The first flight to land in Calicut on Sunday morning was an Air Arabia flight from Sharjah, which landed at 3:42 am local time, reported Emirates News Agency (WAM).

This was followed by two domestic flights from Chennai and Bangalore which landed shortly after 7 am.

One flight each from Dubai, Muscat and Jeddah are also expected late at night on schedule. Flights bound for Jeddah and Sharjah left for their destinations during the day.

A few flights from other airports in the Gulf were cancelled but reasons for the cancellations are not known.

Read more:

Death toll from India plane crash rises to 18, includes pilot and co-pilot

Black box, cockpit voice recorder recovered from Air India Express plane crash site

Meanwhile, Indian investigators on Sunday began examining the black box of the crashed Boeing-737.

Wreckage from an Air India Express jet, which was carrying more than 190 passengers and crew from Dubai, after it crashed at Calicut International Airport in Karipur, Kerala, early on August 8, 2020. (AFP)

In an interview with Reuters partner ANI on Sunday, Arun Kumar, head of India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation, said the country would open the recovered transcripts to international investigators, as well as manufacturer Boeing.

“Only after conducting a thorough and unbiased probe, can we tell what exactly happened,” Kumar said.

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