On Wednesday morning, Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar, along with four others — his personal security officer Vidhit Jadhav, pilot-in-command Sumit Kapur, first officer Shambhavi Pathak and cabin crew member Pinky Mali —- boarded the ill-fated VT-SSK Learjet 45 business jet to go to Baramati which crashed while landing in a tragedy that killed all of them.
While the ministry of civil aviation has launched a probe into the matter and has recovered the black box of the aircraft to ascertain what led to the tragedy, several videos and witness accounts of the crash have been surfacing, giving a glimpse into different angles of the plane crash, also sparking several theories surrounding the crash.
The crash has set in motion a political whirlwind in Maharashtra, with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) scrambling for a new leader and a potential replacement for Ajit Pawar, one of the key figures in Maharashtra politics who was also lovingly known as ‘Dada’ among his supporters and party workers.
The hometowns and families of those who were on the flight along with Pawar are also grief-stricken, recovering from the loss.
These are five major points into the tragedy-
CID probe – Maharashtra government ordered a probe into the Baramati plane crash which led to the death of Ajit Pawar, which will be carried out by the state’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID). The agency will carry out its probe based on the findings of the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) inquiry. The state police have also filed an accidental death report (ADR) in connection with the plane crash with the Baramati taluka police station, said a senior police officer from the Pune rural police, reported news agency PTI. According to a CID official, the case is usually handled by them when an influential public figure dies in an accident, the report added.
New CCTV footage emerges – A new video of the plane crash has emerged, which captured the last moments of the VT-SSK Learjet 45 plane Ajit Pawar was travelling in. In the video, the plane is seen turning sideways midair as it plummets to the ground, followed by a huge explosion leading to a fireball and thick clouds of smoke. The footage appears to show the aircraft’s left wing dropping suddenly, moments before impact, and also sparked three major theories by experts into what could have gone wrong. Take a look at the CCTV footage here-
The three theories surrounding Ajit Pawar plane crash – The visuals shown in the video have led experts to believe that there could be three possible theories about what actually happened that led to the crash — an aerodynamic stall, a hard banking too close to ground, or an engine failure, as reported by Hindustan Times earlier. An aerodynamic stall means when an aircraft loses altitude when its speed or angle, or both, are in such a state that its wings stop producing lift.
The second possible theory is that of engine failure, to support which, Mark D Martin of Martin Consulting, an aviation advisory firm told HT, “The Learjet 45 is a very fast aircraft and it is not designed to fly well at low speeds, especially during landing. From what I have seen, it appears that the aircraft suffered an engine failure while coming into land. When one engine fails, the power from the other engine can pull the aircraft to one side.”
The third possible explanation, according to an expert who spoke on condition of anonymity is that “it appears to be a late viewing of the runway and trying to get to it with a large bank angle.” However, it must be noted that the exact cause will only be ascertained after a thorough probe.
Black box secured: The Ministry of Civil Aviation said on Thursday that the authorities have recovered the black box of the ill-fated plane for a detailed analysis and that all technical records, operational details, and facts from the accident site are under examination. The ‘black box’, also called flight recorder, is one of the most crucial parts of an aircraft. According to the World Aviation Flight Academy, it is a “device designed to capture and store important data during flight.”
Last words from cockpit were ‘Oh s***’: According to a senior official of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation familiar with the early probe into the crash, the last words heard from the crew before the tragedy hit were “oh s***”. “The last words heard from the crew were ‘oh s***’…,” the person said, as reported by HT earlier. “There were no flames prior to touchdown,” the person said.
