According to an official investigation, the crash of the Air India Express flight from Dubai to Mangalore in southern India in May earlier this year, which took the lives of 158 passengers, was due to the pilot having fallen asleep. It was concluded by the investigation set up by the Indian government that the Serbian pilot, Zlatko Glusica, who was flying the plane in question, had got "disorientated" after having been asleep for most of the three-hour flight.

The government official who revealed the matter did so on condition of anonymity as it is such a sensitive matter. He said that the report will be declared in public only after being presented to the Indian parliament.

According to the investigation panel, Glusica reacted late and failed to follow several standard operating procedures while landing. It was reported that the fault lied not with the runway, as was suggested earlier, but with the pilot.

The government will study the report before taking any kind of action on the matter.

The Mangalore crash was the worst crash in India since the November 1996 mid-air crash between a Saudi airliner and a Kazakh cargo plane near New Delhi that had taken the lives of 349 people.