An IndiGo flight from Bengaluru had landed at the Calicut International Airport at Karipur less than two hours before the crash of the Air India Express flight on Friday, flight radar data has showed.
This was revealed by veteran air safety expert Captain Amit Singh in his blog, AvoBanter, on Sunday.
Amit, a senior airline professional with over 25 years of flying experience, pointed out this after analysing data from Flightradar24, a live flight-tracking website.
He is a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society.
Amit noted that IndiGo flight too followed the same flight path as Air India Express before landing on the easterly direction runway 10 (RWY 10) at the airport.
Like Air India Express, IndiGo too had abrogated its first landing attempt.
Amit noted that the reason for the aborted landing could be poor visibility in rain or low clouds obscuring the pilot's vision to acquire the visual reference of the landing runway.
"The IndiGo ATR may have faced less severe weather and the slower turboprop may have been more forgiving," he noted..
He also noted "the pattern could provide some interesting insights about the prevailing conditions and the interactions with the air traffic controller, who is the only eye and ears of the pilots on the ground".
Eighteen people, including two pilots and four children, were killed when the Air India Express flight (AXB 1344) from Dubai crashed after overshooting the runway at 7:45pm on Friday. The flight had 184 passengers and six crew. The condition of 14 passengers continued to 'critical', said an official statement on Sunday.
The digital flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder have been sent to Delhi for analysis. This will ascertain the cause of the accident.
