2 Pilots, Engineer Perish As Heritage Aviation Chopper Crashes In Pune; DGCA Probes

Pune:  At least three persons including two pilots and an aircraft engineer were feared killed after a helicopter of Heritage Aviation, New Delhi, flying over the Bavdhan area crashed in the hilly terrain, officials said on Wednesday.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has ordered a probe into the tragedy that left Capt Paramjit Singh and Capt G. K. Pillai, besides an aircraft maintenance engineer Pritamchand Bharadwaj, dead this morning in the chopper crash near Bavdhan.

According to officials the chopper, an Agusta 109-VT-EW, had taken off from the Oxford Golf Club in Pune for a flight to Juhu Airport in Mumbai, at around 7.15 a.m. without passengers on board.

En route, barely 20 kms away and some four to five minutes after the take-off, the chopper suddenly crashed at around 7.20 a.m. near the HEMRL-DRDO factory, said a police officer speaking from the site of the tragedy near Bavdhan.

Videos of the incident shot by some locals showed the helicopter apparently losing control and plunging almost abruptly, headlong into a forested hilly region before going up in smoke.

Despite repeated attempts by IANS, officials of Heritage Aviation remained tight-lipped about the tragedy and stonewalled all questions on the victims and the possible causes of the tragedy.

Bharatiya Janata Party’s Minister Chandrakant Patil said that as per preliminary information, Wednesday’s crash may have occurred owing to some technical snag and suspected poor visibility, which will be probed.

As per certain local reports, the ruling Nationalist Congress Party state President Sunil Tatkare, was scheduled to fly by the same ill-fated chopper.

The helicopter was flying to Mumbai to pick up Tatkare for a flight later today after it had completed certain other flights in Beed on Tuesday.

An official said that the police control was informed of the tragedy by a caller and immediately, a team was set up including the local fire brigade, which rushed to the crash spot with the help of villagers, in a difficult hilly terrain of the western ghats.

The police also informed the local aviation authorities and a team of experts from Heritage Aviation was dispatched from New Delhi and Mumbai for a probe into the tragedy.

The Hinjewadi Police Station together with aviation officials are coordinating to assess the situation and other details and the bodies of the victims were shifted for autopsy at a Pune hospital.

This is the second incident of its kind in the Pune hills after a private helicopter on a Mumbai-Hyderabad flight had crashed in the region on August 24, injuring four, and prior to that, on May 3, a helicopter flying to pick up Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sushma Andhare had crashed near a helipad in Raigad.

-IANS