A Kingfisher ATR aircraft, with 42 passengers and four crew members onboard, skidded off the airport’s main runway on Tuesday while it was on its way to a parking bay in the apron control area. The flight, which was coming from Bhavnagar, landed at 4.36 pm as per its scheduled time but skidded off the main runway when it was about to turn right towards the farthest taxiway, N10. Some of the passengers suffered minor injuries in the incident.

All operations at the airport were suspended from 4.38 pm to 6.08 pm following the incident. Further, there were as many as eight diversions for Mumbai-bound flights. According to an airport spokesperson, all flights were diverted to the Ahmedabad airport while one was diverted to Pune. The pilots of the ATR 72-500 have been de-rostered pending a DGCA inquiry.

“From preliminary details, it appears that the aircraft’s speed was higher than required and because there is very little margin for error during the shortened runway operations, the pilots were unable to manoeuvre the aircraft accordingly,” a senior airport official said.

While the operations at airport had earlier been suspended from 3.07 pm to 3.43 pm, sources said there were strong tailwinds at the airport that worked against the ATR. “The wet surface of the runway could be another factor for the aircraft skidding,” an airport official said.

Only last Tuesday, a Go Air pilot was asked to abort landing twice by air traffic controllers after the controller found the aircraft’s descending altitude unusually low. The airport officials are now worried about the DGCA’s position on continuing of operations on Tuesdays after these incidents.

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