Aviation Min Hardeep Singh Puri Recommences Vande Bharat Updates After Kozhikode Crash

Aug 10,2021

After the tragic Kozhikode air crash, Union Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri recommenced the updates of Vande Bharat Mission with tributes to those who died. Taking to Twitter, he apprised the nation about the return of over 6000 stranded Indians from across the world to the country on Sunday.

Meanwhile, an Air India flight carrying 64 Indians from Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, landed at Devi Ahilya Bai Holkar Airport in Madhya Pradesh's Indore on Sunday. The District Health Department screened the passengers for COVID-19 upon their arrival.

Blackbox of crash-landed flight retrieved
The black box of the Air India Express flight IX-1134 which crash-landed at Kozhikode on Friday was retrieved and brought to Delhi to be kept at the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) lab for examination. Director-General of DGCA Anil Kumar on Sunday said that the transcripts would be recovered soon.

At least 18 people died in the horrific plane crash, including the two pilots Capt. DV Sathe and First Officer Capt. Akhilesh Kumar, while the four crew members are safe and the injured were treated at hospitals in Malappuram & Kozhikode. Youngest to succumb was a one-year-old boy who was undergoing treatment at Kozhikode Medical College Hospital after the plane crash.

On Sunday, Malappuram District Collector K Gopalakrishnan revealed that 14 passengers of the crash-landed flight are in a critical condition. He added that 49 people admitted to various hospitals in Malappuram and Kozhikode have been discharged. The remaining 109 people remain hospitalised, he added.

The aircraft had crashlanded after it overshot the runway at about 7.41 pm on August 7 at the Kozhikode International Airport in Karipur. The plane containing 190 people on board fell down 35 feet into a slope due to the airport being a table-top runway and the flight's fuselage broke into two pieces.