New Delhi: Flight 812 was routine, a short trip between Dubai International Airport and Mangalore for all 166 passengers and crew on the Air India Express Boeing 737. The flight was so routine that, after leaving Dubai at 10.35pm, pilot Zlatko Glusica found time to sleep.
But when he woke up, the plane was already overshooting its drop point for approaching the airport on a plateau two years ago this morning.
From that moment on, the sleepy pilot and his first officer, H.S. Ahluwalia, set in chain a series of events which relatives are struggling to understand.
According to the official inquiry, the plane's touchdown was too far down the runway to safely come to a stop. And despite repeated warnings to "go around" from the co-pilot, the foggy-headed Glusica went ahead with the landing, then apparently changed his mind.
The plane overshot the runway, crashed through restraining areas, then hurtled down a thickly wooded area in a deadly fireball.
Only eight people managed to walk away from the burning wreck. It was India's second-worst domestic airline tragedy.
Today, two years later, the survivors and relatives of the 158 who perished on the hillside near Bajpe airport are still waiting for justice and compensation.
"We have settled 121 cases," India's Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh told Gulf News.
"Of these, 97 cases have been settled on a full and final basis, 17 as per the judgement given by Kerala High Court, and seven on partial basis. Regular meetings are being held in Mumbai and Mangalore to speed up the process of distribution of compensation."
The victims' families and association fighting on their behalf, however, are not buying Singh's claims.
Yeshwant Shenoy, a Mumbai-based lawyer and president of 812 Foundation, recently filed a private complaint against the Airport Authority of India, Air India and Director General of Civil Aviation, Mangalore.
"The accident was a direct consequence of wilful gross negligence on part of the Airport Authority of India (AAI), gross negligence on the part of Air India (AI) and Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), besides the pilot," Shenoy told Gulf News.
"The allegation against AAI is that the non-frangible structure in the airport was not in compliance with the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) norms and it was the sole responsibility of the AAI to ensure compliance with the ICAO norms which it did not — and caused the death of 158 innocent persons."
Shenoy, a legal consultant to National Biodiversity Authority, said: "The cause of death for most of the 158 victims was burn injuries and the Court of Inquiry (CoI) had established that the ‘non-frangible' structure was the cause of the fire. The allegation against Air India is that it failed to check the qualification of the pilot flying the Boeing 737.
"At the time of the issuing of Glusica's FATA (Foreign Aircrew Temporary Authorisation) licence, he was not even eligible to fly a Boeing 737-800 in India as he did not have the required minimum ‘pilot-in command' experience on type."
Litigation
Significantly, keeping the issue of passenger safety in mind, the Bombay High Court recently directed the Central Government, DGCA, Air India and the Indian Pilots' Guild to reply to a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) that has raised concerns over the national airline "overworking its pilots without regard to mandatory flying hours".
The PIL, filed by Mumbai resident Atul Vora, has asked the High Court to intervene and verify whether mandatory work and rest hours are followed by Air India to ensure safety of passengers, crew and the aircraft.
Also, Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy told Gulf News that he would take steps to speed up the compensation process to the families of the victims.
The Communist Party of India-Marxist legislator K. Kunhiraman has pointed out that the counsel for Air India was trying to reach an out-of-court settlement with the kin of those killed in the disaster. "Of the 158 killed, 58 are Keralites of whom 40 hail from Kasargode district and 17 from my constituency," Kunhiraman said. "Though the Kerala High Court ruled that they should be given compensation as per international rules, counsel for the airline is trying to influence the victim's relatives and trying to ask them to reach an out-of-court settlement, and this is not fair."
To boot, Members of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) along with Kasargod Member of Parliament (MP) P. Karunakaran have been staging protests at the airline's office in Mangalore demanding that families of the victims receive early and equitable settlements of due compensation.
On July 20, 2011 the Kerala High Court based on the petition filed by one of the victims, ruled that Air India was liable to pay a no-fault liability equal to Rs75 million. In its ruling, the court noted that India was a signatory to the Montreal Convention.
"It is clear that the intention of lawmakers was to bring about a parity in the matter of payment of compensation to the passengers, irrespective of class of travel, while providing for a ‘two-tier system' of compensation as adopted in Montreal convention," Karunakaran said.
The court further ruled that this was over and above any other compensation that the petitioners are entitled to. Air India appealed this order in the Kerala High Court and on August 25, 2011, the division bench stayed the single bench order on compensation of Rs7.5 million.
Meanwhile, Mohammad Beary, President of the Mangalore Air Crash Victims Family Association, explains the struggle dealing with Air India.
"We earlier approached the Kerala High Court and later filed a special leave petition in the Supreme Court of India," he told Gulf News. "The Division Bench said that those who have already claimed the compensation are at liberty to file a suit seeking enhancement. The report with the government of India suggests that there was a pilot error. The Montreal Convention states that in such cases, compensation would have no limit. It has to be decided by a court or a negotiating committee."
Insurance
Reports suggest that the company holding Air India and Air India Express, and its subsidiaries' fleets of 134 aircraft are insured by a consortium led by Reliance General Insurance (RGI) Company, Iffco-Tokio General Insurance and Bajaj Allianz General Insurance.
The insurers have reportedly paid Rs550 million, and it is now up to Air India to decide whether to go ahead with the appeal or not.
Now as many as 10 Indian families based in the UAE are already planning to seek compensation from Air India over the crash. The Mangalore Air Crash Victims' Association has urged families to file claims without delay since the Montreal Convention sets a two-year time limit for any claim.
According to Gulf News sources in the Civil Aviation Ministry, Air India, which is sitting on a mountain of Rs670 billion debt and has reported a loss of close to Rs69 billion this fiscal, has 33,000 employees represented by 13 registered unions who have not been getting their salaries and incentives on time since last October.
"The pilots have claimed that the anxiety stemming from such non-payment of their dues has given rise to undue mental stress, which can act as a major source of distraction during flights," sources revealed.
The government has admitted that the national carrier is making operational losses of Rs100 million every day. "It is a fact that the total loss of Air India every day on its operations is approximately Rs100 million," Singh told Gulf News. "Air India had to collect approximately Rs5.74 billion from various central Ministries as on March 15, 2012. During the last three years, Air India has received Rs1.14 billion from the Ministry of Defence, Rs2.12 billion from Prime Minister's Office and Rs1.13 billion from the Ministry of External Affairs."
The pain
Mohammad Nooh was just over two years old when his mother along with 10 others perished in a gruesome road accident. Six months later, his father and three of his siblings — two sisters and a brother — died in the Air India Express Mangalore air crash, leaving the boy all alone.
Now, two years after the horrific accident in which 158 people perished, Nooh is still looking for his parents and siblings, under the impression that one day they will return.
"What would you tell a two-year-old when his whole family is killed in one shot? It was difficult to control him as he was continuously looking for his family, so his grandparents would console him by saying that they [the family] would return soon," Syed Maqbool, the boy's maternal uncle who works as an operations manager in Al Rahmani International, said.
Nooh's father, Nasser Damudi, and his family were residents of Dubai for a long time. According to Maqbool, Damudi studied in Indian High School Dubai and worked as a real estate broker.
However, circumstances had forced Damudi to temporarily move his family back to India and, within a few months, his wife Shariqa died in a road accident.
On May 22, 2010, Nooh was waiting to meet his father who was coming back to India with his three children Sara, 11, Nabiha, 7, and Suhaib, 9 on Air India Express 812. Fate, however, had other plans in store.
"When their mother died, the children were understandably very disturbed and, just to give them a change of air, he [Damudi] had brought them to Dubai. They were very happy when they were going back.
"They were all keen to see Nooh again who was in Bhatkal, but that was never meant to be," Maqbool said.
Between November 2009 and May 2010, a span of six months, Maqbool lost eight members of his family in two separate incidents — two sisters, a brother, a brother-in-law, two nieces and a nephew.
Nooh currently lives with his grandparents in Bhatkal, a small town in India's southern state of Karnataka. His eyes still search for those he will never see again in his life.
— By Shafaat Shahbandari, Staff Reporter
