Kerala plane crash: Among 23 critical passengers, 3 are on ventilators, 26 discharged

Three out of 126 injured passengers currently admitted in Kerala hospitals following the crash of Air India Express flight at Karipur Airport in Kozhikode on Friday night are on ventilator and are in a critical condition along with about 20 others while 26 injured have been discharged after treatment, said aviation minister Hardeep Puri after visiting the injured in a Kerala hospital.

“A few patients are in critical condition, three of them are on ventilators,” Puri was quoted as saying by news agency ANI. 18 people on board the plane including the two pilots have succumbed so far.

“There were 190 people on board the aircraft, out of them, 18 lost their lives. 149 people were also admitted to hospitals, of which 23 have been discharged,” Puri added while commenting on the current status of the injured.

Kerala state government has announced that it would bear the treatment expenses of all those injured in the plane crash irrespective of the hospitals they are admitted in. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has also announced a compensation of Rs 10 lakh to the next of kin of each deceased.

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Vijayan confirmed that 23 people injured in the crash were in critical condition. “Currently, 149 people are in various hospitals of Malappuram and Kozhikode, out of which 23 are in critical condition. Earlier, 23 were discharged after being provided initial medical assistance,” Vijayan was quoted as saying by the news agency.

The CM also said that four out of the 18 people to die in the tragedy were children. An equal number of male and female casualties were among the 14 adults who lost their lives in the crash. The chief minister has promised any further assistance required to support the victims to return to normal life.

While most passengers were from Kerala, a few also belonged to Tamil Nadu and Telangana.

One of the victims of the crash has tested positive for Covid-19, the state government has said that all the accident victims will be tested for the contagion including the dead.

The Air India Boeing 737, operating flight IX-1344 from Dubai to Calicut with 191 passengers and crew on board touched down at 7.40 pm in rain and adverse wind conditions on runway 10 of Karipur airport before it overshot the runway and slid into a gorge with its fuselage splitting into two on impact.

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Two blackboxes of the aircraft have been recovered, which will be analysed during the probe ordered into the causes of the accident at the table top airport, similar to the Mangalore airport which witnessed the last air crash to take place in the country in 2010, killing everyone on board.

Airport Authority of India’s chairman Arvind Singh has said that some issues had surfaced with the runway in 2015 but had been resolved with clearance obtained in 2019.