After the tail portion of a Spicejet plane hit the runway during landing, the pilot managed to level the landing gear and bring the aircraft to a stop on the uneven landing strip of Thoothukudi airport. The 49 passengers inside the narrow-body Bombardier aircraft were shaken as they exited the plane, not knowing by what margin they had escaped a disaster. Air Traffic Control sources said that the plane came very close to making a ‘belly’ landing – which almost always has fatal consequences.
On Sunday morning, with clear skies overhead, the plane left Chennai at 7.30 am and was in sight of Thoothukudi by 8.40 am. Sources at the airport described how the tail of SG 3291 made a grating sound as it hit the ground, before the plane levelled out and completed the landing. “When a pilot comes in to land, the rear wheels have to touch down first. For this to happen, the plane has to come in at an incline, which is usually adjusted by the pilot using the aircraft’s wing flaps. This incline may have been too much, which caused the tail crash,” said D Devaraj, regional executive director (Southern Region), Airports Authority of India.
Immediately after the ‘shaky’ landing, passengers were hurried outside the airport and further flights of that plane cancelled – including a run to Madurai and back. “We pressed a reserve flight into action and the return flight at 3 pm took off from Thoothukudi without incident,” said a Spicejet official. The Madurai passengers, of whom Thoothukudi Collector Ashish Kumar was one, had to make do with a road trip because of the cancellation. The tail of the plane has been damaged and it has been grounded with immediate effect until a team from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) deems it airworthy. The team reached the port city on Sunday evening and began their evaluation. “Though we cannot say that it is pilot error at this point, the fact remains that it is a major incident, which is why we are having an inspection by the DGCA,” said Devaraj.
Airports Authority of India officials have blamed the short and uneven landing strip at the airport for the incident. C A Prabhakar, AGM, Airport-in-charge claimed that the passengers were “unperturbed”. However, AAI sources confirmed that they had launched an independent investigation into the matter.