AURANGABAD: Sixty one passengers including two crew members met with a fiery end when an Indian Airlines (IA) Boeing 737 aircraft carrying 112 passengers and six crew members crashed while taking on from the Aurangabad airport on April 26. The flight IC491, was on the Delhi Jaipur Udaipur Aurangabad Bombay sector.
Interestingly enough, initial reports from govt. sources said the engine had exploded even though eye witnesses told reporters that the landing gear of the plane had hit a truck.
The Captain of the aircraft VT ECQ, S.N.Singh, lady copilot Monisha Mohan and two cabin crew members survived crash. Rescue teams had recovered 58 bodies, according to IA officials here. At Least seven passengers and the remaining two crew members are missing, 12 passengers have been critically injured.
Among the VIPs on board the ill-fated aircraft were Videocon Chairman Nandulal Dhoot, his cousin, C.R.Dhoot and the company’s Vice president
A.DJoshi. An IA Airbus A320 commander, Captain S§.B.Mulherkar, his wife and two children. None of the above figured in the first list of survivors released by IA in Bombay. The Special Inspector General; Law and Order, S.K.Ayyangar, who was sitting in front of the aircraft, had a narrow escape when he jumped out of the plane. A Japanese industrialist Y.Osawa on his way to Bombay too had a miraculous escape.
The Station Manager, told reporters that the exact reason of the crash was still to be ascertained, However, according to first information reports, the plane, immediately after taking off, hit a truck, loaded with cotton bales. The pilots tried to save the plane but instead, hit some high tension wires, about 5 km from the airport and exploded,
The Civil Aviation Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and Maharashtra Chief Minister Sharad Pawar, after visiting the site of the mishap, told reporters here that they ruled out any pos sibility of sabotage since the plane had hit a truck.
Article extracted from this publication >> April 30, 1993
