published by: Debalina Dey
Last update: March 20, 2023, 00:11 IST
The training plane crashed in the hills near the Bhukkutola village of Balaghat and caught fire. (PTI representation image)
Authorities have yet to find the black box from the crashed plane belonging to Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Uran Akademi (IGRAU), an officer at the Police Branch (SDOP), Balaghat, Madhya Pradesh, Durgesh Armon told PTI.
An Air Safety Team (AST) from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation arrived at Birsi airport in Maharashtra’s Gondia district on Sunday to investigate the plane crash that killed two pilots in neighboring Madhya Pradesh a day earlier, a report said. official.
Authorities have yet to find the black box from the crashed plane belonging to Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Uran Akademi (IGRAU), an officer at the Police Branch (SDOP), Balaghat, Madhya Pradesh, Durgesh Armon told PTI.
On Sunday, the bodies of flight instructor pilot Mohit Thakur and trainee pilot Vrikshanka Maheshwari, who died in the plane crash in Balaghat district, were handed over to their families.
“The bodies of the two deceased were handed over to their families after completing the formalities and the reason for the accident could only be determined after the investigation,” IGRAU spokesman Ramkishore Dwivedi said.
Thakur (24) was a resident of Brungal in the Chamba district of Himachal Pradesh and the trainee pilot Maheshwari (19) hailed from Gandhidham in the Kutch district of Gujarat, he said.
The training plane had taken off from the Birsi airstrip in Gondia district, on the border with Balaghat, at around 3:06 p.m. on Saturday. It lost connection with Air Traffic Control (ATC) at 3:11 p.m. and crashed in the hills near the Bhukkutola village of Balaghat and caught fire, authorities said.
Meanwhile, an MP police officer denied the claim that the aircraft might have crashed due to bad weather in the hilly area, some 40 km from the Balaghat district headquarters. The weather was clear, he said.
An IGRAU official had said on Saturday that bad weather could have caused the accident.
Teams from ATC Gondia and Amethi have not yet reached the crash site, an MP police officer said. Meanwhile, Dwivedi said: “A two-member aviation safety team contacted Birsi to investigate the accident and the exact reason can be determined only after they submit their report. The aircraft involved in the mishap was a Diamond DA-40 type single-engine aircraft and said aircraft does not have a black box. In addition, the aircraft had been completely destroyed after the accident.”
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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed)