By now, you all have you heard about the tragic news regarding Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and the Indian Air Flight.
It’s a real heartbreaker. Just seconds before the fatal crash, Captain Sabharwal made a chilling ‘Mayday’ call about the plane losing power.
Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, who had 8,200 hours of flying experience, desperately cried ‘Mayday…no thrust, losing power, unable to lift’ before the aircraft went down and hit a residential property.
Air India later confirmed that 241 of the 242 people aboard flight AI171 died in the crash.
Miracle British survivor Viswashkumar Ramesh, who was flying alongside his brother, remembers ‘a loud noise…then the plane crashed’.
The Boeing was not much more than 400ft above ground when the two experienced pilots onboard apparently lost power in both engines.
They then had 17 agonising seconds to wrestle with the controls before their state-of-the-art plane smashed into a medical college packed with doctors, sending a fireball soaring into the sky.
Distressing video footage shows the jet’s fateful last moments as it rapidly lost altitude and speed, which would have filled the cockpit with a cacophony of terrifying alarms.
Captain Sabharwal and Clive Kundar, his co-pilot with 1,100 hours of experience, issued a desperate mayday call warning the plane was ‘losing power’.
The footage appears to show them hopelessly trying to nudge up the nose of their sinking aircraft moments before the devastating impact.
Aviation experts put forward two leading theories: a flock of birds being sucked into the engines, disabling them both when needed most, and a mystery over the aircraft’s ‘flaps’.
Captain Saurabh Bhatnagar, a former senior pilot, said the engines may have failed after a bird-strike, similar to the Jeju Air crash in South Korea last December.
He said: ‘From the footage I have seen, it looks like prima facie the case of multiple bird hits. The takeoff was perfect.’
Salil Colge, a lecturer in aviation management at University College Birmingham, added: ‘Historically there have been reports of several bird strikes in this area in the past, and that could be one of the possibilities.’
It’s a scary reminder of how fragile life can be, especially when you’re soaring thousands of feet above ground. We are sending our prayers and thoughts to the victims and their families during this difficult time.
