Plane That Crashed In Mumbai Declared "Unserviceable" After UP Accident

The 26-year-old small plane that crashed near Mumbai, killing all four on board, was in repairs for months before its test flight yesterday. It was its first flight in around nine years, sources say.

The Beechcraft King Air C90 model aircraft was transported from Delhi to Mumbai by a truck, sources have told NDTV. Engineers of Indamer, an aviation repair and maintenance company, had been fixing it for months.

The privately-owned plane, a 12-seater, was sold by the Uttar Pradesh government in 2014. It had been grounded and was sitting in a hangar since an accident on February 22, 2008, according to UP officials. The aircraft skidded off the runway while landing in Allahabad. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation, after investigating the incident, declared the plane "unserviceable". 

Six years after the crash, the UP government was able to sell it to a private company that in turn sold the plane to Mumbai-based UY Aviation.

Sources say the weather conditions were not suitable for a test flight yesterday.

The husband of Captain Maria Zuberi, one of the two pilots who died in the crash, indicated that the weather was not right for the test flight.

The plane took off for its 50-minute test flight a little after noon from the Juhu airstrip after a puja, with engineers cheering its take-off. At a height of around 700 feet, the plane was hit by a snag.

P Kuthariya said he had been told by his wife that the flight had been put off. " A test flight was aborted yesterday as the runway was filled with water. It was to be aborted again today, due to bad weather. The flight could have been avoided. Haste, if any, was wrong, lives could have been saved," he said, adding that he had texted his wife to ask if she had landed or not and then learnt what had happened from TV.

A streak of flame is seen on the road in Mumbai's Ghatkopar where the Beechcraft King Air C90 crashed on Thursday

"It should be the weather, or a snag. The plane was damaged, they got it repaired. Got to know that pilots tried a lot to save the flight, they crashed before they could complete emergency landing," said Mr Kuthariya. Captain Zuberi and her co-pilot Captain Pradeep Rajput had, in their last moments, been able to avoid a school and several high-rises before crashing into a construction site.

The two others on the plane were maintenance engineers Surabhi Gupta and Manish Pandey.