The Metro report on Tuesday on the runway mix-up

The names of both pilots who landed a SpiceJet flight on the wrong runway in the city airport on Monday afternoon have been struck off the airline’s roster.

Four members of the permanent investigation board of the Airports Authority of India (AAI) are probing the incident.

“Both pilots have been de-rostered and the matter is being thoroughly investigated,” Sanjay Agarwal, the CEO of SpiceJet, said in a statement on Tuesday.

At 2.46pm on Monday, the flight from Bagdogra, with 139 on board, landed on the primary runway, which had been closed for maintenance work. More than a dozen men were working on the runway then and three vehicles were parked there.

The pilots, one of them a foreigner, told the AAI investigators that they were trying to land on the secondary runway and did not know where they went wrong, said sources.

According to them, although the lights of the primary runway had been switched off, Instrument Landing System equipment might have been functional. “The pilots may have received transmission from the glide path and localisers and got confused,” said an airport official.

“However, even if they had received transmission, they should have ignored that since they knew that they would have to land on the secondary runway,” added the official.

Work was on about 1,800 metres from the point where the flight touched down on the northern end of the runway. Realising their mistake, the pilots braked, stopping the Boeing 737-800 series aircraft about 800 metres from the workers.

“Since the pilots were experienced, they could stop the aircraft without crashing,” said another airport official.