First flight in 9 years after an overhaul

This was the first flight in nine years of the plane that crashed in Ghatkopar after its complete overhaul. The aircraft last flew on February 22, 2008 when it was with the UP government.

The UP government had bought the 12-seater in 1995 for the state's top dignitaries, including chief ministers. But after an accident that rendered the aircraft unserviceable, it sold the aircraft to UY Aviation in 2014.

Thereafter, the aircraft was under maintenance for the last one and a half years. Thursday’s was the first test flight of the aircraft upon completion of maintenance task before applying for grant of Certificate of Airworthiness.

A Mumbai-based aircraft maintenance company, Indamer Aviation, was contracted for the job of overhauling the plane. It was this company that had taken permission for the ill-fated flight.

Kanu Gohain, Executive Director of Indamer Aviation, said the company had undertaken a complete overhaul. "The checking process is done twice to be fail-safe," Gohain, who was the country's aviation regulator earlier, told news agency ANI.

The plane had completed its test flight and seemed to have done fine. The pilots had flown the 26-year-old aircraft to Surat and were just moments away from landing at Juhu airstrip. At 1.07 pm, the pilots spoke to the Juhu air traffic control and confirmed that they were set to land.

Sixty seconds later, something went wrong. The plane lost contact with the ATC officials at Juhu and Mumbai airports. Officials tried to switch frequencies to make contact but it didn't help.

Investigators are yet to examine the black box, which records all flight information to ascertain what happened. That there was no time for the pilots to even send a SOS suggests that it was sudden.