Less fuel might have caused air ambulance to crash-land

The aircraft, operating as an air ambulance, crash landed in Najafgarh around 10 kilometers short of Delhi’s Indira Gnadhi International Airport on Tuesday.

Lack of fuel and not engine failure may have forced the Beechcraft King Air C-90 plane to make an emergency landing in Najafgarh, initial investigations into the accident has revealed.

The aircraft, operating as an air ambulance, crash landed in Najafgarh around 10 kilometers short of Delhi’s Indira Gnadhi International Airport on Tuesday (Vipin Kumar/HT Photo)

The aircraft, operating as an air ambulance, crash landed in Najafgarh around 10 kilometers short of Delhi’s Indira Gnadhi International Airport on Tuesday. The aircraft was carrying a critically ill patient from Patna. Luckily, all seven passengers on board the aircraft survived the crash.

“The aircraft did not have enough fuel, not even enough to reach the Delhi airport. The initial theory of both engines failing does not seem to be true,” said an official.

The aviation ministry has handed over the probe to Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau and a team headed by assistant director Raje Bhatnagar and consisting BSF Inspector General Bindu Sethi and air safety officers Dinesh Kumar and Shilpy Satiya will carry out the inquiry.

Pilots carrying less fuel points to a serious safety lapse, said officials. According to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation regulations an aircraft should carry fuel for the flight duration, plus fuel for taxiing, waiting time in case of congestion over the airport and enough fuel to fly to the nearest alternate airport, which in this case was Jaipur.

“An alternate airport was not planned for in the flight plan, where the flight could have been diverted in case of bad weather, despite it being an air ambulance,” said another official.