By Team Mangalorean
Pics Rajesh Shetty

MANGALORE, June 30, 2010: The Air India engineering crew today started evacuating the debris of the  IX 812 Air India Express plane that crashed in a village near Bajpe airport on May 22. Heavy machinery that arrived today from the new Mangalore Port and the timber yard started picking up the parts of the plane one by one.

According to the Air India officials a team of the Boeing Company will be here next week to identify the parts of the aircraft and assemble them in a bunker in the same order they appear on the aircraft when it was produced. This re-assembly will help the investigators of the crash to determine the cause of crash.

The tender for clearing the debris had been bagged by Fiza Group. Mr A S Balakrishna Naidu, Engineer of Fiza Group said the workers have been provided with hand gloves, masks, helmets and shoes to ensure that they did not fall prey to infectious diseases during the clearance operation.

The cranes picked up parts like the fins, belly and the wings and fuselage and the engines. The work will take not less than a week to fully clear the debris from the site and heap it up in a distant corner of the airport the Air India authorities told. The AAI has been approached by the Air India to allocate a corner of the Mangalore Airport terminal near Kenjar for storing the crash until such time the investigations are over.

The local people who got the air of the debris removal operation rushed to the spot and helped the Air India engineering crew in loading the trucks and jeeps.

Chief of Security in Air India N J Rao and three other engineers were supervising the operations.

It could be recalled here that the crash had taken the lives of 158 passengers who were just minutes away from landing when the ill fated flight overshot the runway on this dreaded tabletop airport broke into two pieces and crashed through the perimeter wall and plunged into the 300 feet deep ravine before coming to its final resting place in Karambaru valley in Kenjaru village.

AI approaches court for revision of its earlier order

After the Delhi High Court had last month ordered the National Airline Air India to open the locks of its employees unions offices, which were sealed after a flash strike after the Mangalore tragedy, the Airline today asked the court to review its order and allow them to seal it again.

The review petition was filed today by National Aviation Company of India Ltd (NACIL) and Air India seeking to restrain the sacked employees from causing any disturbances in the work and asked for the court's permission to seal their offices.

Air India counsel Lalit Bhasin told the court that the office bearers of the employees union should not be allowed to sit in the premises of the airport as they misuse the premises and create nuisance against the airlines.

The premises of the union's offices were sealed as the employees of ACEU and All India Aircraft Engineers' Association (AIAEA) had gone on a flash strike on May 25 to protest a 'gag order' directing them to refrain from making public statements and harming the image of the company after the May 22 Mangalore air crash.

The Govt had de-recognised the Employees union claiming that the recognition can be withdrawn any time as it is not covered under any law, Mr Bhasin told the court.

On June 28, the court had stayed Air India's May 27 order by which it had directed to seal the union offices in various parts of the country and also in addition to de-recognising the union had also sacked 58 employees in an unprecedented crackdown.

Justice M C Garg today issued notice to the employees union and sought their response in this regard by July 7.

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