A captain nearing retirement and a travel influencer: Know the 12 crew members who died in Air India plane crash
All passengers – except one – on board the Air India flight bound for London Gatwick Airport that crashed shortly after take-off from Gujarat's Ahmedabad airport on Thursday afternoon have died, the airline confirmed.
There were 242 passengers and crew on board the plane, including 169 Indian nationals, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese nationals, and one Canadian. One passenger, Vishwashkumar Ramesh, a British national of Indian origin, miraculously survived the crash.
The 12-member crew of the plane was among the 241 persons who died in the tragic Air India Dreamliner crash.
The aircraft was under the command of Captain Sumeet Sabharwal with First Officer Clive Kunder. While Captain Sabharwal had 8,200 hours of flying experience, his copilot had 1,100 hours under his belt, according to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA)
Sixty-year-old Captain Sabharwal was the senior-most crew member on board the ill-fated flight. Sabharwal had been living in Jalvayu Vihar in Powai in Central Mumbai with his aging father. Captain Sabharwal was just a few months away from retirement, according to a report in The Indian Express.
Flight attendant Deepak Pathak was one of the crew members on the crashed flight. A resident of Badlapur in Thane district near Mumbai, Pathak had last spoken to his mother, saying "good morning", his sister said, according to news agency PTI.
Pathak worked as a cabin crew member with Air India for 11 years, his sister said. "He called our mother in the morning and said `good morning'. Though we were not able to speak often due to our busy schedules, my mother and I regularly talk about him, like where is he, has he returned home," she said.
Deepak is one of the five siblings and had got married four years ago.
Saineeta Chakravarty, 35, was one of the cabin crew members who were on board the Air India Dreamliner. Chakravarty lived in Santacruz west and had recently joined Air India after working with Go Air.
As friends and neighbours gathered at the house on Thursday after the crash news was flashed, Saineeta's mother was unable to accept the fate. "Please give me one day. Let her come home first," she said, as reported by Times of India.
Kongbrailatpam Nganthoi Sharma was among the 12 cabin crew members on board the flight. Her family shared the ordeal with the news agency PTI as they tried to get in touch with Sharma.
"We called her up several times after receiving the news but nobody picked up the calls. The internet on her phone is also still on. However, we stopped calling her around 6 pm fearing it would drain the battery," K Khenjita, a relative of Nganthoi, told the news agency.
Nganthoi is the middle child among three siblings. Her eldest sister works in a private schoo,l and her youngest sister is a student in Class 9, the news agency said.
Please give me one day. Let her come home first.
Among the victims was Roshni Rajendra Songhare, a member of the cabin crew and a travel influencer on Instagram.
Songhare's death was confirmed by Maharashtra MLA Ravindra Chavan. "We are profoundly saddened by the tragic demise of Ms. Roshni Songhare from Dombivli in the devastating plane crash in Ahmedabad. As a dedicated flight crew member, her untimely loss is a heart-wrenching tragedy. May her soul attain eternal peace," stated the Maharashtra MLA on X.
Songhare, who has over 54,000 followers on Instagram, was a travel influencer, apart from working as flight attendant on Air India.
Shradha Dhavan and Aparna Mahadik were the two other senior cabin crew members on the plane. The other cabin crew members have been identified as Maithili Patil, Irfan Shaikh, Lamnunthem Singson, and Manisha Thapa.
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Hindustan Times
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Time of India
38 minutes ago
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Hindustan Times
42 minutes ago
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The fundamental forces of flight Every aircraft exists in constant balance between four competing forces. As the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum put it: 'for take-off, thrust must exceed drag and lift must exceed weight. For level flight, lift must equal weight and thrust must equal drag'. For the 787, this balance is complex. The aircraft's two engines must generate between 54,000 and 74,000 pounds of thrust each, depending on variant and configuration. During take-off, this thrust must overcome the aircraft's drag and provide enough forward velocity for wings to generate sufficient lift supporting the plane's maximum take-off weight of 502,500 pounds, or 228,000 kg. The margin for error is narrow. While minimum thrust needed for take-off is about 1/18th of weight, this theoretical minimum assumes perfect conditions and unlimited runway length—luxuries rarely available in real operations. The lift equation To understand the conditions, and how minute changes in them have significant implication for calculations such as how much fuel to carry or, in fact, how many to board, it's important to look at the precise mathematics behind lift generation. Lift is determined by an equation that involves speed, a coefficient of lift determined by factors such as wing design, flap settings and angle of attack), and wing surface area. It is here that one of the much-speculated aspects of flight 171's final moments -- the flap's being potentially retracted -- could be of significance. If the flaps were indeed prematurely retracted, the plan would not have the lift it needed. Another significant variable in this equation is air density. And air density is sapped by the hot temperature. On Thursday, the temperature at the Ahmedabad airport at the peak of the day was 42°C. In other words, the air would have been far less dense than usual. According to the Federal Aviation Administration's Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge, 'the less dense the air, the less lift, the more lacklustre the climb, and the longer the distance needed for take-off and landing. 'The standard temperature at sea level is 15°C, and temperature typically decreases by about 2 degrees for every 1,000 feet of altitude. Given Ahmedabad airport's elevation of 180 feet, the expected ambient temperature should have been around 14.6 degrees. On the day of the crash, the temperature was around 42°C - nearly 28 degrees above the standard atmospheric condition. Though the runway length is about 11,000 feet, under such high-temperature conditions, the effective take-off distance available is reduced to approximately 9,600 feet, leaving far lower margin for safe lift-off,' explained Mohan Ranganathan, an aviation security expert. And then there is humidity, which further compounds these challenges. Higher humidity means more water vapour in air, which is less dense than dry air. This is because water vapor molecules are lighter than the nitrogen and oxygen molecules that make up dry air. Such conditions, especially the confluence of so many factors, require careful calibration of how much weight pilots can carry, how long their take-off run needs to be, and the angle at which the lift off. The engine limitation Modern jet engines operate within precisely defined limits crucial during investigations like Flight 171. Principal limitations include maximum internal pressure the casing can withstand and maximum allowable operating temperature. This dual-limitation system creates a performance envelope that changes dramatically with environmental conditions. At low altitudes and cooler temperatures, engine pressure limits performance. In hot conditions, reduced density requires engines to work harder for the same thrust, reaching temperature limits before pressure limits. 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