Dubai: India's Aviation Minister Praful Patel said he felt "morally responsible" for Saturday's Air India crash that claimed 158 lives, but declined to confirm reports that he had offered to resign.
"As head of the civil aviation family I feel very saddened and a great sense of anguish," Patel told reporters in New Delhi after returning from the crash site near the southern city of Mangalore.
"I also feel personally morally responsible that such a sad and tragic incident has taken place," he said, after briefing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the disaster.
Patel refused to confirm local television reports quoting official sources saying he had offered Singh his resignation.
"I have conveyed my deep sense of anguish to the prime minister," he said.
The crash occurred when the Boeing 737-800, carrying 160 passengers and six crew from Dubai, careered off the end of the "table-top" runway at Bajpe Airport that serves nearby Mangalore. Four infants and 19 other children were among the passengers. The British pilot and Indian co-pilot were among the dead.
It then plunged into a forested gorge where it was engulfed in flames.
Patel said the prime minister had told him he should "not be overcome" by the situation.
"We should try to face the situation and to be able see that if there are mistakes to be corrected, to correct them," the minister quoted Singh as saying.
Patel refused to speculate on the precise cause of the accident, saying an inquiry had been ordered into the incident and that efforts were being made to retrieve the plane's digital flight data recorder, or "black box".
Dense black smoke billowed from the wreckage of the flaming Boeing 737-800 aircraft in a hilly area with thick grass and trees just outside the airport.
Firefighters sprayed water and foam on the plane as others struggled to find survivors. An Associated Press photo showed two rescuers running up a hill carrying a young girl covered in foam to waiting medics. The child's fate was not immediately known.
Workers pulled scores of burned bodies from the blackened tangle of aircraft cables, twisted metal, charred trees and mud at the crash site. Many of the dead were strapped into their seats, their bodies burned beyond recognition.
Relatives of the victims, who had come to the airport to meet them, stood near the wreckage weeping. "This is a major calamity," V.S. Acharya, home minister for the state of Karnataka, told CNN-IBN.
By yesterday afternoon, rescuers had pulled 146 bodies from the wreckage. Eight other passengers had been rescued and were being treated in hospitals, the airline said.
Patel said that conversations with the cockpit and other records showed the flight was operating normally before the touchdown.
Air India runs cheap flights under the Air India Express banner to Dubai and other Middle Eastern destinations where millions of Indian expatriate workers are employed.
The crash was the deadliest in India since the November 1996 midair collision between a Saudi airliner and a Kazakh cargo plane near New Delhi that killed 349 people.
Manmohan Singh expressed condolences and promised compensation for the families of the victims. Boeing said it was sending a team to aid in the investigation.
Scores of villagers scrambled over the hilly terrain to reach the wreckage, and began aiding in the rescue operation. Pre-monsoon rains over the past two days caused low visibility in the area, officials said.
Officials differed on whether it was raining at the time of the crash.
The Mangalore airport's location, on a plateau surrounded by hills, made it difficult for the firefighters to reach the scene of the crash, officials said. Aviation experts said Bajpe's "table-top" runway, which ends in a valley, makes a bad crash inevitable when a plane does not stop in time.
"If the pilot overshoots the runway, the aircraft will be in trouble," said Asif, an aviation expert.
Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said the plane's pilot, a British citizen, had more than 10,000 hours of flying experience, including 26 landings at Mangalore. The Indian co-pilot had more than 3,750 hours of experience and 66 landings at Mangalore, he said.
External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna said the Mangalore runway had a reputation for being difficult.
—Inputs from agencies
