NEW DELHI — An Indian airliner with more than 180 passengers skidded off a wet runway in southern India Friday night and split in half, causing many injuries, Indian media reported.
The Air India Express flight was returning from Dubai to Kozhikode, a city in India’s Kerala state.
Indian media showed injured passengers lying in the hallways of a hospital and, according to news reports, one of the pilots died and another was injured. It has been raining heavily in that area for the past week and aviation experts said it appeared that the plane slid off the runway after having landed.
Indian media showed images of the jetliner’s fuselage cracked in half but there appeared to be no fire. Rescue crews were dousing the plane with water as rain continued to pelt down.
“There was not much loss of life,” M.B. Rajesh, a former member of Parliament from Kerala, told the NDTV news channel.
“Considering the severity of the accident, the loss of life was limited,” he added. “That is a relief.”
He said that all passengers had been evacuated by 9:15 p.m. and preliminary information indicated that two had died.
In 2010, an Air India flight from Dubai carrying 166 people crashed into a heavily wooded valley moments after landing at an airport in southern India, killing 158 people.
