Aircraft crash kills trainee pilot, trainer in Dhenkanal

Angul: A two-seater training aircraft crashed at the airstrip of the Government Aviation Training Institute (GATI) at Birasala in Dhenkanal district on Monday morning, killing a woman trainee pilot and her trainer, and prompting the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to begin a probe.
“The aircraft — Cessna FA-152 VT-ENF — crash-landed from a height of 100 feet at 6.30 am,” SP (Dhenkanal) Anupama James said.A DGCA team arrived at Kamakhyanagar to inquire into the incident.
The deceased have been identified as Aanish Fatima (20) from Tamil Nadu and Sanjay Kumar Jha from Bihar. Both were critically injured after the crash and were taken to Kamakhyanagar hospital where doctors declared them ‘brought dead’. Although the cause of the crash is yet to be ascertained, sources in GATI suspect a technical snag. “The aircraft successfully flew for two rounds before crashing. It had developed a snag recently but was repaired successfully,” the sources said.
IGP (North Central Range) Narasingha Bhol said, “We suspect a technical snag led to the crash. The aircraft toppled after take-off and came crashing down on the airstrip itself.”
“The two bodies have been kept at Kamakhyanagar hospital. Postmortem has been conducted,” the SP said, adding that the families of the two had been informed. The GATI, which was established in May 2019, is spread over 50 acre and has the capacity to train 90 trainees per batch. The institute was shut during the lockdown and had reopened only on June 1 after relaxations were announced. It is run on a public-private partnership mode and its office is located in Bhubaneswar.