Pilot was snoring before Air India crash

The pilot of an Air India plane that crash-landed in May, killing 158 people, could be heard snoring heavily on the cockpit voice recorder shortly before the incident, an investigators' report has found. The official inquiry into the incident on 22 May, when the Boeing 737-800 overshot a hilltop runway at Mangalore in western India and plunged down a ravine, concluded that the Serbian captain was asleep for more than half of the three-hour flight from Dubai and was "disorientated" when he attempted to land the plane.

Listening to the cockpit voice recorder, investigators heard "heavy nasal snoring and breathing" from Zlatko Glusica, said the Hindustan Times, which obtained a copy of the report from the government-appointed court of inquiry. While Glusica had awoken before the landing, he was believed to have had "sleep inertia", the newspaper said. The crash was India's worst air disaster for more than a decade, with only eight people surviving after leaping from the wreckage before it burst into flames. Most of those on board flight IX-812 were Indian workers returning from Dubai.



The court of inquiry found that Glusica, who had more than 10,000 hours of flying experience, landed the plane 1,500 metres down the 2,400-metre runway at Mangalore's Bajpe airport in heavy rain. He and the co-pilot, HS Ahluwalia, an Indian national, attempted to take off again but failed to gain height and the plane plunged off the edge of the "tabletop" runway into jungle below. Investigators concluded that had Glusica applied emergency braking he could have stopped the plane in time.

The cockpit recorder picked up Ahluwalia repeatedly warning the captain to "abort landing" and "go around", saying there was not sufficient runway to land. Just before the crash both men are heard saying: "Oh my God." The report has been submitted to India's civil aviation minister, Praful Patel, and will be presented to parliament.