Pilot
error focus of India collision investigation
November
14, 1996...............................Web
posted at: 8:25 a.m. EST (1325 GMT)
NEW DELHI (CNN) - Speculation on the cause of the
mid-air disaster which killed 349 people focused on
possible pilot error on Thursday as India defended itself
against charges that its flight safety equipment was
outdated. A Saudi Arabia Airlines jumbo jet carrying 312 people
took off from New Delhi Tuesday evening. Seven minutes
later it collided with a KazAir Ilyushin IL-76 freighter
that was preparing to land.
 India launched an official inquiry, headed by a high
court judge, into Tuesday's disaster in which two planes
collided near New Delhi. "We will not spare any
culprit" if any individual was to blame, Prime
Minister H.D. Deve Gowda said.
The Asian Age newspaper said on Thursday the
onus of guilt had shifted "to either one or both of
the pilots."
The Times of India said preliminary indications showed
the mishap was "probably due to the Kazakh pilot's
error."
But Deve Gowda, who visited
the macabre crash site on Wednesday, cautioned against
jumping to conclusions.
"Until the report is available, it cannot be said
whether it was failure of pilots or the air traffic
control," he told reporters at the crash site at
Charkhi Dadri, 80 km (50 miles) west of New Delhi.
Authorities said the windscreen of the Kazakh
freighter was largely intact after falling some 14,000
feet (4,270 metres) to the ground, indicating it was not
a head-on crash.
Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabian
officials were completing arrangements on Thursday to fly
home the bodies of 13 Saudis killed over India in the
world's worst mid-air collision in which 349 people died.
"We are in touch with our people in India to
finalise the arrangements. We are hoping the bodies might
be flown back to Jeddah on Thursday or Friday," one
official at the Saudi Arabian Airlines Corporation
headquarters in Jeddah said.
"Most of the Saudi
bodies have been identified," another official said,
but did not say how many.Saudi newspapers reported on
Thursday that 11 Saudi bodies had been identified. The
Saudi victims are one passenger and 12 crew members,
including five anti-terrorism security men. The officials
said they received on Thursday the final list of
passengers and crew on the Boeing 747 when it and an
incoming Kazakh plane collided minutes after the Saudi
plane took off from New Delhi on Tuesday.
Kyrgyzstan Kyrgyz President
Askar Akayev sent a message of condolence on Thursday to
the families of 13 traders from the central Asian state
who died aboard the Kazakh cargo plane involved in
Tuesday's mid-air collision over India.
A foreign
ministry official in the capital Bishkek told Russia's
Itar-Tass news agency relatives stood little chance of
compensation under international rules because Kyrgyzstan
was too poor to subscribe to international airline conventions.
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