Trainee pilot dies as aircraft crashes in Amreli town
Rajkot/Ahmedabad: A 22-year-old trainee pilot perished after a single-engine aircraft belonging to a New Delhi-based company crashed in a residential area of Amreli town on Tuesday.
The pilot, Aniket Mahajan, carried out four takeoffs and landings from the Amreli airstrip before the single-seater aircraft crashed into a tree and fell into an open plot around 12:30 pm in the Shastrinagar locality on Giriya Road.
Visuals showed the Tecnam P2008 JC MkII two-seater aircraft fell into the plot surrounded by several houses and caught fire, but there was no injury to any local residents. The airstrip is located just about 300 metres from the residential area.
Four teams of fire and emergency services reached the spot within three minutes of receiving a call and retrieved Mahajan's body from the aircraft's wreckage.
"The trainee pilot was undergoing training, and he practised landing and take-off four times. For some undetermined reasons, the aircraft suddenly crashed around 12:30 pm," said Chirag Desai, deputy superintendent of police, Amreli.
Police said that the aircraft belonged to the Delhi-based
Vision Flying Training Institute
(VFTI), which has permission to operate training activities from the Amreli airstrip. VFTI officials have so far declined to comment on the issue, despite repeated attempts to reach them.
Amreli superintendent of police, Sanjay Kharat, said the police have lodged a case of accidental death and begun a probe.
Pintu Vaghela, a resident, told TOI: "We were resting in the house and heard a loud explosion. On rushing out, we saw the plane burning. We called up the 108 emergency ambulance service, police, and fire brigade."
The
Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau
(AAIB), a division of civil aviation ministry, have initiated an inquiry into the crash.
This is the second such incident of a single-engine training aircraft crashing in Gujarat in less than a month. Earlier, on March 31, a Cessna 152 aircraft hard-landed in a field near Mehsana, leaving the female pilot injured.
Meanwhile, concerns about the flying training near the densely populated area have resurfaced after the incident. Uday Joshi, a resident of Amreli, told the reporters that a formal application was submitted to the district collector on Feb 28 by the locals, seeking the closure of the flight training centre and a revision of the flight zone route. However, he claimed that no response has been received from the authorities to date.
Ajay Agravat, a resident of Manekpura area in Amreli, claimed that applications were submitted on Dec 17, 2024, and again on Feb 21, 2025, to authorities.
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