Captain Deepak V. Sathe, who was among those killed when the Air India Express plane he was piloting crashed in Kerala's Kozhikode on Friday, was a former Indian Air Force officer, who flew the MiG-21 fighter aircraft with 17 Squadron (Golden Arrows) in Ambala.
The squadron saw action in the 1999 Kargil war and has been recently resurrected with induction of multi-role Rafale jet fighters, built by France's Dassault.
Sathe, who had also served as an instructor at the Air Force Training Academy, had taken premature retirement from the IAF, to move to civilian flying and joined Air India.
In one of the worst air disasters witnessed in Kerala, the Air India Express flight, returning from Dubai under the Vande Bharat mission, skidded off the runaway at the "table top" Kozhikode airport leaving at least 16, of the 190 people on board, dead including the pilots. The plane plunged 35 feet into the valley below, as it landed on its second attempt amid heavy rain on Friday.
Even as the official death toll from last evening’s Air India Express crash off Kozhikode International Airport’s tabletop runway has spiked to 18, many are saying that the results of the tragedy could have been much worse had the aircraft caught fire.
However, fortunately, despite plunging 35-feet into a gorge and breaking into two, the aircraft didn’t catch fire, thus saving hundreds of lives. And the man being hailed for saving so many lives is the commander of the ill-fated Dubai-Kozhikode flight, Captain Deepak Vasant Sathe, who is among the casualties, along with his First Officer, Akhilesh Kumar.
Also Read: What is hydroplaning which caused AI flight to skid on the runway?
Survivors, too, have credited Captain Sathe, an alumnus of Pune-based prestigious National Defence Academy (NDA) and, subsequently, Dundigal’s Air Force Academy (AFA), with saving their lives.
“It was raining heavily. The pilot had given a warning before landing saying the weather was really bad. He tried for safe landing twice but lost control. It was a miraculous escape for many”, a survivor was quoted.
According to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, Air India Express AXB1344, a B737 aircraft, with 190 people onboard, landed on Runway 10 amid visibility of 2,000 metres in heavy rain, but overshot and nose-dived into the valley and broke into two pieces.
Notably, last evening’s mishap was India’s worst aviation disaster in a decade after May 2010’s Mangalore air tragedy, which took place under near-identical circumstances.