Daily News

Mangalore: Investigators scoured the slopes of a ravine on Sunday looking for the black box of a Boeing 737-800 that crashed off a hilltop runway, killing 158 people.

Crash site experts sifted through the wreckage and collected some parts, but were still to find the flightdata recorder which could provide clues about Saturday's crash. The Air India Express flight carrying 166 people, including the crew, from Dubai crashed while negotiating a tricky landing at Mangalore city's "table-top" airport overlooking a ravine.

Eight people survived, mostly by jumping out of the plane that broke into two after crashing.

"It is not possible to give any reason for the crash unless we find the black box," Peter Abraham, Mangalore airport director, told Reuters.

About a dozen aviation experts were seen examining the jet's mangled hull. At a distance, workers used bulldozers and metal-cutters to clear debris.

It was not clear what caused the crash, and Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel said there were no indications of any trouble during the plane's landing. The weather and visibility was good, he said.

"All other parameters like the aircraft functions and the runway looked to be very normal, so it should have been a normal landing," he said. "But I do not want to speculate on the cause."

Officials said all 158 bodies had been found.

All the passengers were Indians, an Air India official said. Many were likely to be migrant workers in Dubai, the rich Gulf emirate which employees thousands of men and women for poorer Asian countries, often to fill lowly jobs.

"I remembered when a plane crashes it bursts into flames, so tried to get as far away as possible," Sabrina Haq, a 22-year-old medical intern told Reuters from a bed at Mangalore's A.J. hospital.

"I don't remember if someone picked me out or I fell out of the plane. I didn't want to die."

She suffered a broken leg and had bruises on her face.