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Human error: Mangalore crash probe reveals pilot's blunders Read more: Human error: Mangalore crash probe reveals pilot

NEW DELHI: Over 100 days after the Air India Express Boeing 737-800 aircraft crashed in Mangalore killing 158 people, it has now emerged that the accident was a result of series of wrong decisions taken by Capt Zlatko Glusica. Why did the commander — who had over 10,000 hours of flying experience and who always took interest in the training of his co-pilots — ignore many warnings on that fateful morning? The Mangalore crash seems to be one of the worst cases of "press-on-itis" — a term used to describe a situation in which a pilot's sound judgment is replaced with poor decision-making due to an urgency to complete a landing. Select data from the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) and the Digital Flight Data Recorder (DFDR) — revealed in the Court of Inquiry on Wednesday — of the ill-fated VT-AXV aircraft left aviation industry bigwigs in a state of disbelief. The facts that emerged were, one the aircraft wasn't in stable approach condition during its descent. Despite several warnings from his co-pilot, Capt Glusica ignored standard operating procedures. Second, after the aircraft touched down and thrust reversers were deployed, the commander opted for a go-around. This was in complete violation of the rule. Capt Glusica attempted to take-off when only 800 feet of the 8,038-ft-long runway was left. The last sentence uttered in the cockpit was of Capt H S Ahluwalia's: "We don't have runway left." The aircraft then zoomed ahead, hit a localiser, failed to climb and crashed into the gorge. Also, the flight had violated several laid-down limits — for criteria like airspeed and rate of descent — deemed critical for a safe approach. Capt Glusica took a nap for an hour and forty minutes soon after the flight took off from Dubai as CVR recorded noises of snoring, heavy breathing and no words from the commander. It is a normal practice in almost all cockpits for one of the pilots to take "controlled rest" while the other monitors the flight.

                                                                                                               
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