The Kingfisher flight was scheduled to land at the Mumbai airport on Tuesday at 10:30 am. An official said that the flight was just minutes away from the north end of runway 09/27 when the controller noticed the low altitude it was flying at and immediately asked the pilot to gain height.

Accordingly the pilot pulled up the flight and opted for a go-around over the airport. The flight landed at the airport at 11:02 am. There were 150 passengers on board the flight. The Mumbai airport has seven approaches for landing. There are hills at most of the approach paths. This makes a flight’s descent steep at 3.3 degrees when compared to other airports where the average glide slope is roughly three degrees.

“The 09 end and 14 end of the airport’s runways 09/27 and 14/32 face the sea however all other approaches have hills,” said an ATC official.

An ATC official also added that a low altitude of upto 500 feet is acceptable if the pilot faces any technical issues. “We could do with upto 500 feet as the flight was above a water body,” said the official. “A lot depends on what went wrong in the cockpit and what technical issues he faced,” said the official.

During preliminary enquiry the pilot of the flight told Air Safety branch officials of the DGCA that the flight’s FMGS had failed because of which the pilot failed to detect its altitude, an airport official added.

“Kingfisher Airlines’ Flight Safety Department received a message from the regional office of DGCA on Wednesday stating that flight had been detected at a lower altitude than normal in Mumbai. In keeping with Kingfisher Airlines’ philosophy of placing guest safety and comfort above everything else, the cockpit crew have been taken off active flight duty and de-rostered pending further investigations. We will abide by any directions that DGCA may give in this regard,” the airline said in a statement.