Sounds of snoring and deep breathing captured by the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) indicated that the captain of the Air India Express Boeing 737-800 was asleep until the last 25 minutes of the ill-fated flight. And during those last few moments, his judgment might have been impaired by sleep inertia, said an Indian court of inquiry.
With little time for planning and a late descent clearance because the air traffic control (ATC) radar was out of service, the aircraft arrived very high on the approach to Mangalore, India. Despite several warnings by the first officer and by the enhanced ground-proximity warning system (EGPWS), the captain continued the grossly unstabilized approach.
The 737 touched down long and fast. The captain deployed the thrust reversers and briefly applied wheel braking, but then attempted to reject the landing. The aircraft overran the runway, struck the instrument landing system (ILS) localizer antenna mounting structure, traveled through the airport boundary f…
