A year after a Kingfisher aircraft skidded at the Mumbai runway during short runway operations, the inquiry report of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has slammed the Mumbai Air Traffic Control (ATC) as well as the pilots for the incident.
The ‘Terrible Tuesday’ that became famous after a Kingfisher ATR-72 skidded off Mumbai runway 27 of 09-27 on November 10, 2009, was due to errors of the Mumbai ATC and the pilots, said the DGCA report.
According to the report, ATC officials failed to inform the approaching Kingfisher IT 4124 Mumbai-Bhavnagar flight that an Air India A319 had skidded due to water patches on the runway just four minutes before the Kingfisher flight was given clearance.
“The ATC, while giving landing clearance to the Kingfisher aircraft, did not mention that the earlier aircraft had aquaplaned during landing and also that the runway had water patches on the runway,” the report reads. Aquaplaning refers to a film of water formed between the aircraft tyre and the runway that causes the aircraft to skid.
The report also stated that the flight’s pilots had not followed the correct procedures before and during the landing phase. The Kingfisher aircraft was not on profile during the approach and was high and fast. The decision of the crew to continue an unstabilised approach was not in accordance with requirements of the company’s operations manual and regulatory instructions.
Moreover, the report also stressed on the lack of crew resource management (CRM) on behalf of the pilots. “There was a failure of crew resource management principles on part of the pilots. They had not carried out adequate briefing regarding the approach procedure and runway conditions of runway 27A. The co-pilot also did not intervene so that the unstabilised approach could be aborted and a “go around” could be made. The spokesperson for Kingfisher Airlines was not available for comments.
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