Air Ambulance with 7 on board crashes in Jharkhand shortly after takeoff to Delhi | India News
New Delhi: A Delhi-bound air ambulance with seven people, including two crew members on board, crashed shortly after take off from Ranchi on Monday night. Beechcraft C90 (VT-AJV) belonging to Redbird Airways Pvt Ltd (not Pilot Training Academy) took off at 7.11 pm. It is learned that just after climbing above 6,000 feet, the pilots contacted Kolkata Air Traffic Control to request a “weather deviation” – meaning they wanted to change course to avoid bad weather. However, the 39-year-old’s plane crashed soon after.The aircraft operating a “Medical Evacuation (Air Ambulance) flight on the Ranchi-Delhi sector crashed at Kasaria Panchayat in Chatra district of Jharkhand. There were seven people on board including two crew members. The flight took off from Ranchi at 7.11 pm. After establishing contact with Calcutta at 7.34 pm, air contact was lost and radar contact with Calcutta was lost approximately 100 nautical miles south-east of Varanasi. The search and rescue team of the district administration is on the spot and the Air Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) team is being sent for investigation,” the director general of civil aviation (DGCA) said in an initial statement.According to the flight manifest, the plane had a patient (Sanjay Kumar), doctor (Dr. Vikas Kumar Gupta), paramedic (Sachin Kumar Mishra), two attendants (Archana Devi and Dhuru Kumar) and two pilots — Captains Vivek Vikas Bhagat and Savrajdeep Singh — on board. It was supposed to reach Delhi at 10 pm.This is the second accident in a month involving a small aircraft and raises serious questions about aviation safety in India. On January 28, Maharashtra Deputy CM Ajit Pawar and four others died in a plane crash at Baramati Airport.In May 2011, a Pilatus PC-12 operating as an air ambulance crashed in Delhi’s Faridabad from Patna. Seven people on board, including two pilots, and three on the ground lost their lives in the accident.
