Mangalore, May 22 2010: An inquiry by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has been ordered into the Mangalore air crash and an Air India team will assist it in the probe, civil aviation minister Praful Patel said on Saturday.

He told reporters that preliminary observation showed that there was no problem with the four-year-old runway or the aircraft but the plane had overshot by about 2000 feet, leading to the mishap.

Patel said the pilot Z Glusica, British national of Serbian origin, and co-pilot HS Ahluwalia were not new to the terrain as they had undertaken several landings at the same airport.

He said a detailed inquiry would be conducted by the DGCA to ascertain what actually happened at the airport.

"The DGCA has ordered an inquiry.

Air India has constituted a team, headed by Executive Director (Operations) to establish the circumstances, collect data and assist the DGCA inquiry," the minister said.

The Black Box, an instrument which records all conversations between the pilots and ATCs, has not been recovered as yet, he said.

Citing initial details available, he said the "friction quotient" at the runway, which has been operational since 2006, was in order and had been certified by the DGCA.

To a question, Patel said the runway, on which the ill-fated plane landed, was bigger than the other one at the airport.

This runway is 8,000 feet long as compared to the other one, which is 6,000 feet long.

Only seven people survived after the Air India Express plane from Dubai with 166 persons on board the Boeing aircraft crashed and caught fire at Mangalore's Bajpe airport.

125 bodies have been recovered so far.

Out of the seven survivors four had minor injuries, three major injuries and one escaped unhurt.

"As far as the information available with us is concerned, seven people were rescued and shifted to local hospitals in Mangalore for their treatment," Air India personnel director Anup Shrivastava told reporters in Mumbai.

The state-of-the-art Boeing 737-800, which was inducted on January 15, 2008, had 166 passengers and a six-member crew on board the budget carrier, flight IX-812 .

The passengers included four infants.

Glusica (55) had 10,000 hours of flying experience, an official said.

Flight IX-812 from Dubai to Mangalore crashed into the thick forested valley off the runway after slamming through a boundary wall.

The runway at Mangalore airport is situated on a hillock, which in aviation parlance is known as a table top runway.

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