Mumbai: The plane had completed its test flight and it seemed to have done fine. The pilots had flown the 26-year-old aircraft to Surat and were just moments away from landing at Mumbai's Juhu airstrip. At 1.07 pm, the pilots spoke to the Juhu air traffic control or ATC tower and confirmed that they were set to land.
Sixty seconds later, something horribly went wrong. The plane lost contact with the ATC officials at Juhu and Mumbai airports. Officials tried to switch frequencies to make contact but it didn't help.
The 12-seater Beechcraft King Air C90 with four people on board crashed into an under-construction building in Mumbai's densely-populated Ghatkopar seconds later.
Investigators are yet to examine the black box, which records all flight information to ascertain what happened.
That there was no time for the pilots to even message a SOS message that it was sudden.
By some accounts, Captain Pradeep Rajput and Captain Maria Zuberi did the best they could under the circumstances to steer the plane away from a school and other populated parts of Ghatkopar and crashed through the boundary wall of an under-construction residential complex.
CCTV footage that has emerged has captured the moment of the plane crash when the metal hit the concrete with a loud explosion, turning the aircraft into a ball of fire. The two pilots and the two maintenance engineers lost their lives. So did a pedestrian.
The plane had taken off for the 45-odd minute flight at 12.20 pm from the Juhu airstrip after a puja. A video of the aircraft's last take-off has the engineers cheering its take-off. "Yes, the landing gearing is in," said one, others clapped excitedly.
30/06/18 Saurabh Gupta/NDTV
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Sixty seconds later, something horribly went wrong. The plane lost contact with the ATC officials at Juhu and Mumbai airports. Officials tried to switch frequencies to make contact but it didn't help.
The 12-seater Beechcraft King Air C90 with four people on board crashed into an under-construction building in Mumbai's densely-populated Ghatkopar seconds later.
Investigators are yet to examine the black box, which records all flight information to ascertain what happened.
That there was no time for the pilots to even message a SOS message that it was sudden.
By some accounts, Captain Pradeep Rajput and Captain Maria Zuberi did the best they could under the circumstances to steer the plane away from a school and other populated parts of Ghatkopar and crashed through the boundary wall of an under-construction residential complex.
CCTV footage that has emerged has captured the moment of the plane crash when the metal hit the concrete with a loud explosion, turning the aircraft into a ball of fire. The two pilots and the two maintenance engineers lost their lives. So did a pedestrian.
The plane had taken off for the 45-odd minute flight at 12.20 pm from the Juhu airstrip after a puja. A video of the aircraft's last take-off has the engineers cheering its take-off. "Yes, the landing gearing is in," said one, others clapped excitedly.
30/06/18 Saurabh Gupta/NDTV
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