When the Air India Express flight approached Kerala's airspace on Friday, neither the crew members nor the passengers knew that they have got a riskier and dreadful trajectory ahead before touching the grounds. While the rough weather and poor visibility had toughed the aircraft to have a perfect landing, the tabletop runway at its destination Kozhikode airport had challenged the pilots in touching down the runway safely. 

However, the journey had a catastrophic end after the Air India Express plane, which was part of Vande Bharat Mission, crashed on the ground, went into two pieces, collided on the wall, and killed 18 lives while the mishap had put over 120 people in the hospitals with some under the critical condition. In what has become one of the tragic crashes in the country, the tabletop runway in Kozhikode has strongly been pressed as the reason for the crash along with heavy rains and poor visibility. 

The tabletop runways couldn't be equated to the normal runways that sit on many airports. India has only three tabletop runways in its entire territory - one in Mangalore airport in Karnataka, Lengpui airport in Mizoram, and Kozhikode airport in Kerala. Though India has only three such runways, these have been under the danger zones, always.  Tabletop runway sits on the top of the plateau or hill with one or both ends adjacent to a steep precipice which on either side drops into a deep gorge and this type of runway creates an optical illusion that requires a very precise approach by the pilot.

The state of Karnataka had witnessed such mishap a decade ago of what Kerala witnessed currently. On May 22, 2010, the Air India Express flight 812, which is a Boeing 737, had skidded off the runway and killed 158 people. It carried 164 onboard from Dubai to Mangalore and the aircraft had overshot the runway and plunged down a gorge and killed 158 people and most of them had died due to burns and injuries. 

The incident has become Air India Express's first deadly collision. While the investigation revealed that the pilot was asleep for most of the flight's duration, it alarmed that the country must prepare the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for navigating on these tabletop runways which had a steep precipice and gorge. The inquiry report of this mishap said that the pilots operating in these tabletop airfields in Mangalore and Kozhikode must require extra skill and caution because of the undulating terrain and constraints of space. 

Nine years later, in July 2019, an Air India Express flight from Dubai to Mangalore had skidded off the taxiway and ran onto the grass and it caught up on a hatch of mud. There were 183 passengers on board the plane and no injuries were reported. These runaways would normally be installed in the hilly terrains as the acquisition of the flat and straight land would be difficult and these two airports (Mangalore and Kozhikode) rest close to the Western ghats.

In the following year, the tabletop runway in Kozhikode airport had become one of the main reasons for the crash of Air India Express flight on Friday, which killed 18 people and injured hundreds. According to the reports, Kozhikode airport or Calicut or Karipur airport is the seventh busiest airport in India and it has a very short runway in Kerala and due to its short length of the runway, several international airlines had stopped operating bigger flights to Kozhikode. 

Following the mishap in Mangalore that reported in 2010, the officials have issued warning ten years ago that the tabletop runway in Kozhikode is riskier for landing. The Kozhikode airport has been under the scrutiny of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and on July 11, 2019, the DGCA had issued a show-cause notice to the airport authorities for various critical security lapses. The DGCA had said that the runway has many cracks and water stagnation and asked for explanatory from the authorities. 

The DGCA had audited the airport after an Air India Express flight from Dammam in Saudi Arabia to Kozhikode had a tail strike after landing in the airport on July 2, following which they had given the show-cause notice after finding major security lapses. However, it was not clear whether the action was taken against the airport director, and after a year of inspecting the airport, it has, for yet another, the time had presented the tragic scenes on Friday.  

Responding about Friday's plane crash in Kozhikode, DGCA said it was raining heavily when the pilots of the Boeing 737 plane from Dubai attempted to land. The plane landed at Runway 10 and it ran till the end of the runway and fell into the gorge and split into two parts. The plane had overshot the runway and crashed, leaving 18 to die and hundreds injured. 

According to the reports, the plane had circled around the airport two times before attempting to land and the Civil Aviation Ministry said that the investigation will be conducted into the crash of the plane, which has become one of the deadliest crashes in India in a decade. Friday's crash at Kozhikode is the seventh crash at the airport since 1969 and three crashes had reported casualties. 

We were fortunate that unlike the tragic accident at Mangaluru Airport 10 years ago, where the aircraft caught fire, here preventive action minimised the loss of lives: Hardeep Singh Puri, Civil Aviation Minister on #KozhikodePlaneCrash https://t.co/NUy4UqFfkX

— ANI (@ANI) August 8, 2020

Following Mangalore's mishap in 2010, the Airports Authority of India had increased the Runway End Safety Area (RESA) of the tabletop airports from 90 meters and 240 meters and these areas would reduce the risk of damage to the airplane from undershooting or overrunning the runways and the authorities say the increase in RESA in Kozhikode had saved the bigger mishap as Friday's plane crash would have been worse if the area hadn't increased. The authorities had recovered the black box, which is crucial to ascertain and understand the exact cause of the mishap.

However, the incident had for yet another time alarmed the government on the tabletop runways. On Saturday, while speaking to the media, Minister of State for External Affairs Muraleedharan said that 100 flights which were part of the Vande Bharat Mission had landed in Kozhikode since May 7 and said that the crash has caused due to heavy rain and claimed that the condition of the runway has nothing to do with what happened on Friday and stated that the tabletop runways cannot be ruled out completely.