The black box and cockpit voice recorder have been recovered from the site of an Indian passenger aircraft crash in a southern state, a top official at the Directorate General of Civil Aviation said on Saturday. The Air India Express plane, which was repatriating Indians stranded from Dubai due to the COVID-19 pandemic, overshot the runway of the Calicut International Airport in heavy rain near the southern city of Kozhikode on Friday. As the death toll in the crash touched 18, Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Saturday announced an interim relief of a million Indian rupees for the kin of each of the deceased, Rs 200,000 for the seriously injured and Rs 50,000 for those who sustained minor injuries. Additionally, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan also announced a relief of a million rupees for the deceased. The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), meanwhile, has directed its personnel to go into quarantine as a precautionary measure after at least two passengers of the flight tested positive for COVID-19. Earlier in the day, the Kerala Health Department urged all passengers and those who assisted in the rescue operations to get tested as well as go into quarantine to prevent the spread of the virus. The pilot-in-command Captain Deepak Sathe and his co-pilot Akhilesh Kumar were among those killed onboard the Dubai-Calicut Air India Express aircraft carrying 190 passengers as part of the Vande Bharat Mission. — Agencies
