Mangalore is a tricky airport to land on

The Mangalore airport is considered to be one of the toughest for pilots thanks to the table-top runway which requires a great amount of precision for pilots to land.

Sources told rediff.com that the pilot of ill-fated aircraft who was a Russian may have missed the runway and hence was trying to abort landing. The aircraft which was scheduled to land at 6.30 am on Saturday morning was unable to do so and hence the pilot tried to re-take off and in the bargain the aircraft hit a pole as a result of which the plane skidded off and fell into a valley. This is what the preliminary report says.

Air Traffic Control officials who also pointed out that there was no SOS from the pilot and add that the plane plunged into a valley after overshooting the runway. The black box is yet to be retrieved and a Director General of Civil Aviation team has arrived in Mangalore to probe the incident.

Table-top: The Mangalore airport is considered to be one of the toughest to land since it is located on top of a hill and the runway landing approaches extreme edges on the sides of the hill and hence it is called table-top. The edges of the hill drop into the valley from a height of 300 feet with a short distance of 500 metres on the east side of the runway and 83 metres to 25 metres on the western side. A big disadvantage here is that the runway is not level and the height varies between 90 metres to 83 metres from eastern to western side.

The Mangalore International Airport formerly known as the Bajpe airport was inaugurated in the year 1951. Situated at a distance of 20 kilometres from the city, this airport handles 700 flights at an average every year.

International operations at this airport commenced in the year 2006 and the Air-India Express was the first to commence operations here.