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Pilot Issued ‘Mayday’ Call at 1:39pm, Moments Before Air India Crash in Ahmedabad, Confirms Aviation Ministry
The Ministry of Civil Aviation confirmed on Saturday that the pilot of the ill-fated Air India flight which crashed in Ahmedabad on 12 June had issued a ‘Mayday’ call to Air Traffic Control (ATC). In a press briefing, Civil Aviation Ministry Secretary Samir Kumar Sinha revealed that the flight, which had just taken off at 1:39 pm from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport, encountered serious difficulties almost immediately after becoming airborne.
"The pilot informed Ahmedabad ATC that it was a Mayday, i.e., full emergency," Sinha said. "According to ATC, when it tried to contact the plane again, it did not receive any response. Exactly after one minute, the plane crashed in Medhaninagar, which is located about two kilometres from the airport,” he added.
The flight, designated AI 171, was a Boeing 787 Dreamliner bound for London. It had just completed the Paris-Delhi-Ahmedabad sector without incident before the crash occurred.
Tragically, of the 242 passengers and crew members on board, only one person survived. Among those killed were 169 Indian nationals, 53 British citizens, one Canadian and seven Portuguese passengers, in addition to 12 crew members.
The aircraft crashed into a medical hostel complex in Ahmedabad’s Meghaninagar area, causing devastation on the ground and widespread shock across the country and abroad.
Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, who was piloting the aircraft, was a Line Training Captain with over 8,200 hours of flying experience. It was he who issued the emergency distress signal. The term ‘Mayday’ is an internationally recognised radio call used by pilots to signal life-threatening emergencies. Investigators on Friday recovered the aircraft’s black box from the rooftop of the medical college hostel.
Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu stated that the black box would provide “in-depth insight into what happened moments before the plane crash,” and emphasised that a thorough investigation was already underway.
