"Pilot's Last Message Was 'Mayday'": Aviation Ministry On Ahmedabad Air Crash
The pilots of London-bound Air India flight AI-171 - which crashed 36 seconds after take-off from Ahmedabad - sent one last radio message to Air Traffic Control at 1.39 pm, the Aviation Ministry said Saturday afternoon. The Ministry said the pilots made the distress call after the plane failed to rise above 650 feet. But the ATC's responses got no reply; the plane had crashed by then.
"Mayday, Mayday..." were the final words of Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and his crew before the heavily-fuelled Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner crashed into a college students' hostel in a residential area near the airport, exploding into a fireball that killed all but one of the 242 people on board.
Overall 274 deaths have been confirmed, including those on the ground, in India's worst aviation disaster in nearly 15 years; that was in May 2010 when an Air India Boeing 737 flight from Dubai overshot the runway at Mangaluru airport and crashed into a gorge, killing 158 people on board.
In a press conference today SK Sinha, the Aviation Ministry Secretary, said the authorities were notified of the crash "around 2 pm", which is about 20 minutes after the plane crashed.
"... we received information the plane from Ahmedabad to Gatwick London had crashed. We immediately got detailed information about this through Ahmedabad ATC ... there were a total of 242 people on board, consisting of 230 passengers, 10 crew, and two pilots," Mr Sinha said.
"The plane took off at 1.39 pm and, within a few seconds, after reaching a height of about 650 feet, it started sinking, i.e., it started losing height. The pilot informed Ahmedabad ATC that it was a 'mayday', i.e., a full emergency. When ATC tried to contact, it did not receive a response."
"After exactly a minute the plane crashed in Medhaninagar, which is two kilometres from the airport. The Captain was Sumeet Sabharwal and the First Officer was Clive Sundar."
Meanwhile, in the wake of speculation about the readiness of the plane and possible mechanical, electronic, or technical issues, the Aviation Ministry said the same plane had completed the Paris-Delhi-Ahmedabad sector "without any accident".
READ | How Black Box Brings Investigators Closer To What Caused Air India Crash
The aircraft's black box has been found and more than 100 workers and 40 engineers are engaged in efforts to remove wreckage of the plane from where it crashed, NDTV was told.
Aviation experts said that going by the available visuals, lack of thrust in both engines and a bird hit could be among the probable causes. Visuals from the wreckage area showed bodies being pulled out and the injured, many with burns, wheeled into the city civil hospital close by.
Of the 242 on board, only one person - an Indian-origin British national - survived the crash.
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Hindustan Times
2 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
Barking up the wrong tree
The Municipal Corporation of Delhi is considering issuing an advisory to prevent the feeding of pigeons in public places, which includes our balconies and terraces. The MCD wants to ward off diseases associated with pigeon droppings. Children playing with street dogs in New Delhi. (Arun Sharma/Hindustan Times) In the concrete jungle that I live in, pigeons are the only birds I ever spot and feeding them is in my DNA. My interest in pigeons increased manifold when I read Twilight in Delhi (1940) by Ahmed Ali. In the book, the patriarch, Mir Nihal, loves pigeons and is an ace trainer with a family history of flying them at official functions such as the Delhi Durbar of 1903. The summer of 1911 has been exceptionally cruel, and many of Mir Nihal's pigeons have died. He visits the pigeon market held near the Jama Masjid every Friday to buy more 'Golays' and not 'Kabulis'. The Golays are a novelty in the Delhi market and are being eyed by wannabe flyers. 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Though this grand idea to send around 10 lakh dogs to a pound is untenable – the government does not own even a single shelter as of today – the celebrations and pronouncements on social media continue unabated. Where will the government find funds to build these pounds and then feed these dogs, and in such a short period? Where will they find the catchers to nab these lakhs of dogs? There are just a handful of good catchers around and most of the time, when it comes to vaccination or providing medication, feeders usually help catch the dogs. The existing shelters (all private) are bursting at their seams and are poorly kept. It's not rare to have sleepless nights if one happens to visit such a facility. Ironically, the Supreme Court's pronouncement came after taking suo moto notice of a newspaper report which claimed a child had died of rabies, though it later turned out that the cause of the child's death was meningitis. According to The Lancet, there are 5,726 human rabies deaths annually in India. This study, conducted by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), highlights that while rabies deaths have decreased in the past two decades, India still accounts for a significant portion of global rabies fatalities. The research also emphasises the need for a 'one-health approach' to accelerate progress towards the global target of eliminating dog-mediated rabies by 2030, according to The Lancet, which also states that there has been a '75 percent decrease in rabies deaths over the past two decades'. Most dog lovers know the skewed maths behind the anti-rabies shots. Depending on the severity of the bite, a patient gets four to five shots. What are the chances of every anti-rabies shot being registered as a separate dog bite case? What if the patient visits five different facilities for the anti-rabies shots? While dogs are being cornered as they are so conspicuous and disliked by many who are generally averse to animals, nobody seems to care about the other big 'monster killer' – mosquitoes. Not even the MCD. According to the reported deaths due to malaria in 2022 were 83, but the estimated deaths in the same period were 5,511. Malaria in pregnancy is a life-threatening condition with adverse outcomes. India has inadequate surveillance, but some studies show that 10 percent to 30 percent of pregnant women suffer from malaria. In his book The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator (2019), Timothy C Winegard describes how mosquitoes and their diseases have shaped the outcomes of war, the spread of religion, and the development of modern culture. In the introduction, Winegard writes: 'The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has contributed nearly $4 billion to mosquito research since its creation in 2000, releases an annual report that identifies the animals most lethal to humans. The contest is not even close. The heavyweight champion, and our apex predator in perpetuity, is the mosquito. Since 2000, the annual average number of human deaths caused by the mosquito has hovered around 2 million. We come in a distant second at 475,000, followed by snakes (50,000), dogs and sand flies (25,000 each)…' According to WHO, India registers nearly 50,000 snake bite deaths annually. With one sweeping judgement, the Supreme Court justices have taken the long standing human-dog equation back in time. The dog carers, who prided themselves in the landmark judgment of Justice JR Midha – the Delhi High Court judge who ruled that community dogs had a right to food, must be treated with compassion and emphasised the right of citizens to feed stray dogs – are at a loss for words. The fear of dogs has been systematically unleashed over the past couple of years. Parents now repeatedly instruct their kids to run a mile if they spot a dog. And then there are odd cases such as the one reported from Greater Noida, where a woman in morbid fear of dogs fell off a walkway and fractured her spine. The walkway had a low railing - a structural fault of the building – but her fall and her spine fracture was blamed on the dog. The dog's owner was arrested, though the dog did not even touch the woman. Such incidents, and the many fake videos and stories (such as the one the apex court based its decision on) constantly being circulated on social media have widened the gulf between dog lovers and dog haters. It would have been apt if the justices had pulled up the municipal corporation for not carrying out Animal Birth Control (ABC) programmes or vaccination drives with zest or for withholding payments to NGOs, which were hired to carry it out. Or pulled up pet shops that sell birds, cats, rabbits, dogs and what not and keep them unhygienically caged for long periods. They could have pulled up illegal breeders who sell pedigreed animals, even those unsuited for Indian climes such as huskies or large breeds that need exercise and cannot be confined in small apartments. They could have pulled up those who abandon pedigreed animals when they fall sick or when their reproductive organs fail; or those who abuse animals sexually and physically. 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This is the first study aiming to understand the time taken for individual human recognition in free-ranging dogs, and can serve as the scaffold for future studies to understand the dog-human relationship in open environments, like urban ecosystems, the researchers concluded. 'While some humans are a source of food, shelter and even care for them, others can be threats, as people's reactions towards free-ranging dogs range from extremely positive to extremely negative. It is thus interesting to understand the extent to which free-ranging dogs are capable of recognising individual humans, as this might be impacting their survival in the human-dominated landscape.' Sadly, we now seem set to trade this super easy four-interactions-over-four-days step to dog-less streets, pigeon-less skies and rocket-sized holes in our hearts. Lamat R Hasan is an independent journalist. She lives in New Delhi.
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Hindustan Times
2 hours ago
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Born in Japan, India's freedom fighter Lt Asha Sahay passes away in Patna at 97
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