An Air India Express plane with more than 190 on board crashed at the Karipur airport in Kozhikode in Kerala on Friday. Both pilots have been reported to be dead along with 18 passengers. 123 people have been injured.
From the 123 injured, 16 have been seriously wounded. The flight, number IX-1344, overshot the runway in rainy conditions, “went down 35-feet into a slope before breaking up into two pieces,” Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri told CNN.
The flight from Dubai to Kozhikode, also known as Calicut, had 190 people on board, according to Air India Express
Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said he is deeply “anguished and distressed” at the accident and that relief teams from Air India and Airports Authority of India (AAI) have been dispatched from Delhi and Mumbai.
“All efforts are being made to help passengers. A formal inquiry will be conducted by AAIB (Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau),” he said on Twitter.
“We must remember that it is a tabletop runway at Kozhikode. There seems to have been injuries among all the passengers and some of them are unconscious,” said NDRF Director General SN Pradhan.
Both India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar sent their condolences to the families of the victims on Twitter.
PM Modi showed his pain through his tweet and condoled with families.
