In his first comments after the crash, VK Singh, director of VSR Corp., said that it primarily appears that the pilot could not see the runway and cited possible visibility issues. The aircraft took two loops before the pilots made an approach from runway 2-9, and then they carried out a missed approach, after which, again, they tried to make an attempt, Singh said outside the Mahipalpur compound of VSR after interacting with AAIB investigators.
“I also have no contact with the pilots. They are not there. It is a very unfortunate incident. We’re very sad about it. We are trying to first be with the family, solidly with the family, who have lost kins. It’s a very unfortunate incident. Primarily, it appears that, you know, the pilot could not see the runway… that’s why he would have carried out (the second attempt),” he said.
“The pilot will carry out a missed approach in case he is not comfortable to land on the runway,” he said, adding that both pilots were very experienced. The captain had “more than 16,000 hours of experience” and the copilot was also “1500 hours”. And the captain was very experienced, had worked with Sahara, Jet Airways and he was very experienced on this type of airplane (Learjet), he said.
Singh told The Indian Express that the flight went through periodic airworthiness checks, but could not specify the last time such a check was conducted. “I’ll need to have those documents in front of me to give that information exactly,” he said.
The company has a total of seven Learjet 45 aircraft. Singh said there are no plans to ground the remaining Learjet 45s as of now. “The Learjet worldwide is a very dependable aircraft. So why should we ground them,” he asked.
Singh had arrived at VSR Venture’s Mahipalpur office around noon to meet with officials of the AAIB and DGCA.
The aircraft with Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar on board flew for around 35 minutes before crashing near Baramati, according to flight tracking data. According to preliminary information provided by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), none of the five people on board survived the crash. As it is a serious accident, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau is expected to investigate the crash.
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The jet—identified as a Learjet 45bearing registration VT-SSK and operated by private jet charter operator VSR Aviation—took off from Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport at around 8:10 am and disappeared from the radar at about 8:45 am, as per the flight tracking data from Flightradar24. The flight path shows the aircraft making a loop to line up with the runway as it prepared to land at the Baramati airport, before disappearing from the flight tracker, The Indian Express has reported.
The Learjet 45 is a mid-size business jet aircraft manufactured by Canada’s Bombardier Aerospace, with around 640 such planes built during its manufacturing run between 1995 and 2012. The nine-seater jet that crashed belonged to Delhi-based VSR Aviation. Other details, including the age of the doomed plane, were not immediately available. According to the DGCA database, VSR had a fleet of 18 aircraft, including the one that crashed on Wednesday.
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