No ‘arrestors’ in airport to prevent accidents

Chennai: The

Calicut airport

, where an Air India Express

plane

crashed on landing in the rain on Friday, does not have a

safety

mechanism called arrestors that would slowdown or halt a plane if it overshoots.

After the Mangalore crash in May 2010, which killed 159 people, a court of inquiry report said table-top runways should have

arrestor

platforms at either end of the runway so that planes come to a halt when the wheels sink on it when the plane rolls off the runway.

Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) had flagged safety concerns over the runway in 2015, but Airports Authority of India (AAI) maintained that arrestors are expensive and would eat into the buffer space at the end of the runway. Two types of runway arrestors are common in airports abroad: Engineered material arrestor made of cement blocks and soft ground arrestor made of foamed concrete.

Air safety expert and former member of Civil Aviation Safety Advisory Committee Captain Mohan Ranganathan said arrestors might have prevented the accident in Calicut. “It is all the more crucial because the runway does not have the adequate runway end safety area (RESA) of 240 metres,” he said.

A pilot said such airports in India often have a slightly raised concrete platform at the end of the runway, made of cement and bricks, which can hardly be called a scientifically-designed arrestor. “A well-designed arrestor ensures the plane stops with minimal or no damage,” the pilot said. Runway specifications issued for Calicut airport under aeronautical information publication (AIP) says there is no arrestor. There was an attempt after 2015 to reduce the usable length of the runway to ensure that there will be 240m buffer at the end of the runway. But that did not work out because it would have curtailed the runway length and make the airport unusable for widebody planes like B737, A320 and B747 jumbo.

DGCA gave permission for the Calicut airport to operate widebody planes in 2019.