Indian government settles on payout for victims of Mangalore air crash

[News_Editor]

NEW DELHI, INDIA (BNO NEWS) -- The Indian government has reached an agreement on the amount of compensation to be paid to the families of more than 150 passengers who died in May 2010 when an Air India Express plane crashed in southern India, the government announced on Thursday.

Air India Express flight 812, a Boeing 737-800 aircraft carrying 160 passengers and six crew members, overshot the runway and fell over a cliff while attempting to land at Mangalore International Airport on May 22, 2010. All but eight people on board the aircraft were killed in the accident.

Minister of State for Civil Aviation, K. C. Venugopal, said Thursday that the Court of Inquiry appointed by the Indian government to investigate the crash had submitted its final report. He said all 160 cases, including 152 cases of fatalities and eight cases of injured, were settled for an overall amount of Rs. 115.74 crores (17.4 million U.S. dollars).

"Out of 160 cases, 130 cases have been settled on full and final basis and 30 cases have been settled on Receipt Basis i.e., without signing full Release and Discharge document as per the judgement of Division Bench of Kerala High Court," the Ministry of Civil Aviation said in a brief statement.

The plane of Air India Express - a low-cost airline subsidiary of Air India - had taken off from Dubai International Airport about three hours before it crashed in Mangalore, which is located in the southern state of Karnataka. Investigators blamed pilot error as the cause of the accident.

Captain Zlatko Glusica, 55, a British national of Serbian origin, was piloting the aircraft but slept more than half of the flight. The American National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said its investigators could hear snoring on the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR), something that had never been found on CVRs during previous investigations.

Investigators said Glusica ignored warnings from his co-pilot to abort the landing and was late in realizing that the plane was at a higher altitude than the route's glide path, causing the aircraft to touch the 8,040-foot (2,450 meters)-long runway at least 2,000 feet (610 meters) beyond the usual touch down point.

The aircraft's safety systems also warned the pilot to "pull up," but Glusica failed to take action.

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