Air Craft Crashed Air India plane at Mangalore

At least 158 people were killed Saturday when Air India Express flight 812 flying in from Dubai crashed while landing at Mangalore's 'table top' airport surrounded by deep gorges and erupted in fire when it overshot the runway and plunged down a cliff.                                                                     Click Here Photos

Though it had been raining for two days, there was six kilometre visibility with no wind when the Boeing 737, carrying 160 passengers including 19 children and four infants as well as six crew members attempted to land at 6.05 a.m., the civil aviation ministry said.

There was no distress call from the pilot, a British national of Serbian origin who had received due landing clearance about four miles from touchdown at the hilltop airport at Bajpe, about 20 km from here and 350 km from Karnataka's capital Bangalore.

The aircraft, the ministry said, touched down the 2.45 km Runway 24 'slightly beyond the touch down zone, overshot the runway and went in the valley beyond the runway'.

The Bajpe airport is considered one of the most difficult airports to land and take off from.

Piecing together eyewitness accounts, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Sadananda Gowda said the plane hit an instrument landing system and spun out of control before smashing into a ravine, breaking up and bursting into flames.

Only eight people, an infant included, survived. Some of the injured were in critical condition in Mangalore hospitals. Most passengers were Indians, many returning home from Dubai where they worked. Here's the list of passengers on board Dubai-Mangalore Air India flight. (IANS)