An Air India Express plane with 190 people on board overshot the runway while landing in southern India amid a downpour on Friday, killing at least 18 people, the country's aviation minister said Saturday, while more than 100 people were reportedly injured.
India's civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri also tweeted that aviation accident investigators were dispatched to the scene to look into the cause of the crash, and that the black box and cockpit voice recorder had been recovered from the site.
The pilot and the co-pilot were among those who died, while the four other cabin crew on board were confirmed safe.
The aircraft's operator, Air India Express, said the Boeing 737 flying in from Dubai skidded off the runway while landing at Kerala state's Calicut/Kozhikode international airport at 7:41 p.m. The airline also said the plane did not catch fire.
Flight IX 1344 was part of a program that has been bringing back Indians from abroad amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The minister earlier tweeted that the plane "overshot the runway in rainy conditions & went down 35 ft. into a slope before breaking up into two pieces."
The first images from the site showed the aircraft's fuselage broken in two pieces with debris strewn over the runway and beyond.
Rajeev Jain, a spokesman of the Civil Aviation Ministry, told Kyodo News there were 184 passengers including 10 infants.
The minister also said all 190 people on board had been taken to hospital.
Air India Express, which operates a fleet of 25 Boeing 737-800 aircraft, is a budget airline subsidiary of state-run Air India.
According to NDTV, data on Flightradar24, a flight-tracking website, showed the plane "circled the airport several times and made two attempts to land."
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had tweeted that "authorities are at the spot, providing all assistance to the affected."
On May 22, 2010, 158 people died when an Air India Express jet overshot the runway upon landing at a Mangalore airport in southern India, crashed and burst into flames.
