Will be flying in ‘sick aircraft’, Mumbai crash victim told kin

MUMBAI: Questions were being asked on Friday how the plane that crashed in a Mumbai neighbourhood had been allowed to take off on a test flight the previous day, with one of the four crew members who died reportedly telling her father that the aircraft was in a “very bad” condition.

“It was yesterday morning that we spoke on the phone... She told me that she was to fly later in a third-class aircraft which was in a very bad condition. She said she did not feel good about it,” said Surya Prakash Gupta, Surabhi Gupta’s father, in Sonepat, Haryana.

Surabhi Gupta, a maintenance engineer, died when the 12-seater Beechcraft King Air C90 twin-turboprop aircraft crashed in Mumbai’s Ghatkopar neighbourhood. Pilot Pardeep Singh Rajput, co-pilot Marya Zuberi and technician Manish Kumar Pandey also died in the crash, along with a pedestrian who was hit by aircraft parts and flaming fuel.

“She told me this aircraft was sick. Then how was it allowed to be flown? Who gave the permission? There should be a probe,” said the father.

The aircraft had taken off from the Juhu airstrip on a test flight. It lost control when it was four nautical miles from Juhu. The plane was bought by Mumbai-based UY Aviation, which runs chartered flights, in 2015 from the Uttar Pradesh and Thursday’s was its first test flight after repairs. Officials at Juhu aerodrome, where it had been undergoing repairs, said it was in a poor condition when it was brought to Mumbai, where it was being repaired by Indamer Aviation Pvt. Ltd.

Aviation experts questioned the test flight’s path through densely populated neighbourhoods, and on a day when it was raining. “I am surprised that the test flight was cleared when there were light rains. I hope that the DGCA (directorate general of civil aviation) will conduct a detailed enquiry and not con- clude it is an Act of God,” former air force pilot aviation expert Vipul Saxena said.

On Friday, the Bombay high court emphasised the need to put in place adequate infrastructure for air safety, referring to Thursday’s plane crash.

Meanwhile, Indamer Aviation on Friday denied any glitches in the aircraft, with executive director Kanu Gohain saying the plane had undergone extensive repair work. Indramer Aviation was undertaking maintenance of the plane, and had cleared it for the test flight after it passed the ground tests.

Gohain said that cause for the accident was yet to be ascertained. “What caused the plane crash has not been found yet. It is very strange as there were no emergencies or untoward events during the 40 minutes that it had flown prior to the crash. But the incident is really unfortunate as it claimed five lives,” Gohain was quoted by news agencies as saying .