Going to fly in ‘sick aircraft’, crash victim told father
ROHTAK: Hours before the 12-seater aircraft crashed in Mumbai’s crowded Ghatkopar neighbourhood on Thursday, maintenance engineer Surabhi Gupta— one of the five killed in the incident— told her father over phone that she was going to fly in a “third-class aircraft”.
“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. She assured me she was flying on it this time, but will never step her foot in it again,” said Surya Prakash Gupta, Surabhi’s father, in Sonepat, Haryana. “She told me this aircraft was sick. Then how was it allowed to be flown? Who gave the permission? There should be a probe,” he said.
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- base dU Y 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 conclude 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.