By Jacob K Philip
Editor, Aviation India
The investigation of the 2011 May 22 crash of Air India Express Flight 812 must be reopened.
The Indian Government should discard the the biased, incomplete and erroneous whitewash of a report submitted on April 26, 2011 by the Court of Inquiry and should immediately order a reinvestigation.
The demand for the urgent reopening of the inquiry of the tragic crash in which as many as 158 lives had perished is perfectly in accordance to the rule of the land.
On 2009 March 13, the Government of India had inserted vide GSR No. 168(E) a very important rule to ‘The Aircraft Rules 1937’, which govern everything aviation in this country.
Here is the rule:
75A. Reopening of Investigation – Where it appears to the Central Government that any new and material evidence has become available after completion of the investigation under rule 71, 74 or 75, as the case may be, it may, by order, direct the reopening of the same.
The series of six articles published in Aviation India and Decision Height from May 15 to June 2011 make it abundantly clear that there are enough new and material evidence that make the reopening of the investigation absolutely necessary.
Here is a list of those new and material evidence:
- The fact that a huge portion of the wreckage was taken away from the crash site by locals and was sold as scrap metal. What the Court of Inquiry was inspected and studied (if at all they had done any study) was the remaing wreckage. ( Read the article..)
- The reconstruction of the wreckage was never actually done by the CoI. The image of the reconstructed wreckage included in the report was a computer generated one. (Read The Article..)
- While testifying before the court of Inquiry at Mangalore airport, Six survivors of the crash were made to answer a totaly biased and misleading question by the CoI. The question was, “Do you think the accident occurred because of the fault of the pilot?”This was in plain violation of Rule 7.2.1 of the Manual of Accident/ incident investigation: ‘ The investigation of aircraft accidents and incidents has to be strictly objective and totally impartial and must also be perceived to be so’. (Read The Article..)
- The “ Hard Landing” circular issued by Air India is a major contributor to the accident. The CoI had chosen to ignore this vital fact. (Read The Article..)
All the above four new & material evidence had already been elaboarted in the articles published by us.
But there still are more new evidence & facts the CoI never bothered to find out.
We are publishng that new evidence tomorrow.
(Jacob K Philip can be reached at jacob@indianaviationnews.net)
