MANGALORE, India (AFP) — An Air India Express plane overshot a runway and crashed in flames yesterday in southern India, killing 158 people, as a handful of survivors managed to scramble from the burning wreckage.

Officials said the Boeing 737-800, carrying 160 passengers and six crew on a flight from Dubai, careered off the end of the “table-top” runway at Bajpe airport and plunged into a forested gorge where it was engulfed in flames.

Survivors described hearing a loud thud shortly after touchdown and said the main fuselage broke into two before filling with fire and thick smoke.

The accident occurred shortly after 6:00 am (0030 GMT). Bajpe airport serves the port city of Mangalore, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) away and around 320 kilometres west of the Karnataka state capital Bangalore.

Officials described the landing conditions as fair with good visibility and said there had been no distress call from the cockpit.

Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel, who flew to the crash site, said eight passengers had survived. Three of them were in serious condition, while four were being treated for minor injuries and one escaped totally unscathed.

A young boy pulled alive from the wreckage died on the way to hospital.

It was India’s worst aviation disaster since 1996 when two passenger planes collided in mid-air near New Delhi with the loss of all 349 on board both flights.

One survivor, Umer Farooq, told the NDTV news channel from his hospital bed that he had heard a bang as the plane touched down.

“The plane veered off toward some trees on the side and then the cabin filled with smoke. I got caught in some cables but managed to scramble out,” said Farooq, who suffered burns to his arms, legs and face.

Television images from the immediate aftermath of the crash showed smoke billowing from the fuselage, as emergency crews, who had struggled down steep, wooded slopes to reach the aircraft, sought to douse the fire with foam.

Hours later, rescue workers were still pulling blackened bodies — some of them still strapped upright into their seats — from the remains of the burned-out fuselage.

“The preliminary observation is that the aircraft touched down and did not contain itself within the runway space,” Patel told reporters.

He described the chief pilot, a Serbian national, as a “very experienced” flier who had logged 10,000 hours of flying time.

Emphasising that it was “too early” to determine the precise cause of the crash, Patel noted that the sanded safety area surrounding the runway in the event of an overshoot was shorter than at some airports.

“It does not have much of a spillover area (and) in this case apparently it had not been able to stop the plane,” he said.

After returning to New Delhi to brief Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Patel said he felt “personally, morally responsible” for the crash, but declined to confirm reports that he had offered his resignation.

Another survivor, KP Manikutty, said he escaped with only minor injuries.

“There was no warning to passengers about any trouble and it appeared to be a smooth landing,” Manikutty told the Press Trust of India.

“Immediately on touching the ground, the aircraft jerked and in a few moments hit something. Then it split in the middle and caught fire. I just jumped from the gap,” he said.

The flight manifest said the 160 passengers — all of them Indian nationals — included 137 adults, 19 children and four infants.

Air India Express is budget airline operated as a subsidiary by the state-run carrier.

Many Indians from Karnataka and other southern states work in Gulf cities such as Dubai as construction workers, domestic staff and in other low-paid jobs.

In a statement, US-based aircraft manufacturer Boeing said it was sending a team of investigators to India to help in the crash inquiry.

The last major plane crash in India was in 2000, when 61 people were killed after a passenger plane crashed into a residential area near the eastern city of Patna.

Yesterday’s crash came as Air India is struggling to turn around its finances after posting a net loss of more than one billion dollars last year.