Wet runway, over-speeding caused aircraft skidding at MIA: Sources
Mangaluru, Jul 1: A wet runway and over-speeding were the likely cause of the Air India Express flight veering off the taxiway after landing at the Mangaluru International Airport, airport sources said Monday.
The 183 passengers and crew on board the Dubai-Mangaluru flight were safe, the airport and airline had said in separate statements after the Sunday evening incident.
The airline has ordered an investigation into the episode.
The incident evoked memories of the air tragedy at the same airport on May 22, 2010 when an Air India Express flight from Dubai overshot the tabletop runway and plunged into a gorge, killing 152 of the 160 passengers and all six crew members.
According to airport sources, weather-related problems due to heavy rain had forced the aircraft to go around on Sunday when it was about 1,000 feet from the ground and it landed safely on the second attempt.
After skidding off the taxiway, the aircraft moved a little further and got stuck in the mud when the pilot applied the brake.
All the 183 passengers and six crew on board were deplaned at the spot using a ladder platform.
Mangaluru International Airport (MIA) Director V V Rao said the plane may have skidded off the taxiway due to high speed, while the exact reason can be ascertained only after the probe.
He, however, said flight operations from the airport were not affected after the incident.
The flight INX 384, which departed from Dubai at 12.39 pm local time, landed at the airport here at 5.35 pm.
While the plane did not overshoot the runway, the mishap occurred when the aircraft vacated the runway and entered the taxiway towards the terminal, the sources said.
The Air Traffic Control observed that the aircraft was moving at a higher speed when it skidded, they said.
Some passengers said the aircraft shook violently before coming to a halt.
U T Khader, who is the Dakshina Kannada district-in-charge minister, urged the Directorate General of Civil Aviation to conduct a detailed investigation into the incident.
The probe into the 2010 crash had found that the captain misjudged the height while landing, resulting in the flight overshooting the runway located on a plateau.
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More than 50 lakh large farmland trees vanished between 2018 and 2022 in India: Study
New Delhi (PTI): More than 50 lakh large farmland trees vanished between 2018 and 2022 in India, partly due to altered cultivation practices, revealing a "concerning trajectory," new research published in the journal Nature Sustainability has found.
Researchers said that "an observable trend was emerging" wherein agroforestry systems are being replaced with paddy rice fields, even as a certain loss rate could be found to be natural.
Large and mature trees within these agroforestry fields are removed, and trees are now being cultivated within separate block plantations typically with lower ecological value, they said.
Block plantations, usually involving fewer species of trees, were found to have increased in numbers which some villagers from Telangana, Haryana, Maharashtra and other states confirmed via interviews.
The team, including researchers from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, explained that the decision to remove trees is often driven by perceived low benefits of the trees, coupled with concerns that their shading effect, including that of Neem trees, may adversely affect crop yields.
Boosting crop yields also contributed to the expansion of paddy rice fields, further facilitated by water supply which was augmented by the establishment of new boreholes, the authors said.
"This finding is particularly unsettling given the current emphasis on agroforestry as an essential natural climate solution, playing a crucial role in both climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies, as well as for livelihoods and biodiversity," the authors wrote.
Agroforestry trees are a vital part of India's landscapes as they generate socio-ecological benefits, along with being a natural climate solution owing to their ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the air.
However, despite their importance, the lack of robust monitoring mechanisms has contributed to an insufficient grasp of their distribution in relation to management practices, as well as their vulnerability to climate change and diseases, the researchers said.
For the study, the team used AI-based deep learning models for detecting individual non-forest trees for each year. By tracking the tree crown over the years, they then analysed the changes. Crowns of multiple trees together form a canopy.
The researchers mapped about 60 crore farmland trees, excluding block plantations, and tracked them over the past decade.
They found that around 11 percent of the large trees, each having a crown size of 96 square metres and mapped in 2010/2011, had disappeared by 2018.
"Moreover, during the period 2018–2022, more than 5 million large farmland trees (about 67 square metres crown size) have vanished, due partly to altered cultivation practices, where trees within fields are perceived as detrimental to crop yields," the authors wrote.
The researchers clarified that while the findings may appear to contradict official reports and studies showing that tree cover has increased in recent years, they reported only gross losses and did not look at tree gains as a separate class.
