Description

On 9 June 2010, a Boeing B757-200 being operated by Chennai-based Blue Dart Aviation on a scheduled cargo flight from Mumbai to Bangalore lined up and commenced a night take off in normal ground visibility aligned with the right hand runway edge lights of 45 metre wide runway 27. ATC were not advised of the error and corrective action and once airborne, the aircraft completed the intended flight without further event. A ground engineer at Bangalore then discovered damage to the right hand landing gear assembly including one of the brake units. After being alerted, the Mumbai Airport Authorities discovered a number of broken runway edge lights.

Investigation

An Investigation was carried out by the Indian DGCA. Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) data was available to the investigation. It was found that the aircraft commander, a Check Captain for the Operator, had been PF for the take off and that the First Officer had been aware of his line up error and had alerted him to a position ‘on the right’ of the runway 27 centreline. In response, the standing-start, full runway length take off had been commenced with an intention to re-align. However, when the take off roll was commenced, a further deviation to the right initially occurred during which the FO called out twice accordingly in quick succession prior to the standard ‘80 knots’ , ‘V1’ and ‘rotate’ calls.