Son of Air India victim a pilot too

The irony of it all doesn’t escape Amarjit Bhinder.
“It’s the only thing I didn’t want him to do and it’s the one thing my son ever wanted,” said Bhinder. “. . . ever since he was a little boy.”
Her concern is understandable. Her son, Ashamdip Bhinder, 32, is a pilot with Air India; Bhinder is the widow of Satwinder Singh Bhinder, the co-pilot of Air India Flight 182 that was bombed by Sikh separatists in 1985 as it flew from Montreal to Mumbai, killing all 329 people aboard.
“I’m still scared when he (Ashamdip) flies but I couldn’t have taken his dream away,” said Bhinder. “And that has given me a grip on life and what happened 25 years ago.”
Her son, who was about 20 months old when he first declared that he wanted to be a pilot, never changed his mind even when he was old enough to understand how his father had died.
In a strange way, Bhinder says her son’s dream has helped exorcise her demons.
While growing up, Bhinder says her son talked ceaselessly about becoming a pilot “but I never said anything. I would nod, or just keep quiet. It terrified me but I never said a word about my fears. I hoped this obsession would go away.”
Finally, when he was 18 and wanted to become a pilot immediately, she struck a deal with Ashamdip. If he went to college and graduated, she would pay the steep tuition fees for flying school in U.S. in three years time “I hoped that in this time he would change his mind.”
But Ashamdip started taking lessons for a private pilot’s licence. When the time came for him to fly solo in a twin-seater, he asked his mother to be his first passenger.
They were the toughest — and the proudest — 15 minutes of her life. “I changed my mind there … up in the air,” said Bhinder. “If this is what he wants to passionately, I would support him.” Ashamdip went to a flying school in Fort Worth in Dallas for a commercial pilot’s licence in 1999.
A year later, he started flying Boeing 747 for Sahara Airlines in India, exactly 15 years after the bombing of Air India Flight 182.
Now he flies mostly in Southeast Asia for Air India.
In addition, Bhinder’s daughter, Jasleen, 36, is married to a pilot with Singapore Airlines.
19/06/10 Raveena Aulakh/the star.com, Canada

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Categories: Air India - International Jun 2010, Foreign Jun 2010, NACIL Jun 2010, Safety Jun 2010