Mumbai
\nFive people, including the pilots and crew, lost their lives and two bystanders injured after a Beechcraft King Air C90 turboprop aircraft crashed into an under-construction building at Ghatkopar in suburban Mumbai this afternoon, police and fire officials said.<\/p>\n
The deceased have been identified as pilot Maria Zuber, co-pilot Pradeep Rajput, and aircraft maintenance engineers Surabhi and Manish Pandey.<\/p>\n
The fifth person who died in the mishap was a watchman who was guarding the under-construction building. Two other bystanders who were injured in the incident have been identified as Lavkush Kumar and Naresh Nishad.<\/p>\n
Both are undergoing treatment at the Rajawadi Hospital. Police officials quoting eyewitnesses in nearby buildings said the aircraft suddenly came down roaring and crashed into a building that was under construction meters away from a structure that was occupied.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe number of casualties could have been much higher had the aircraft crashed into one of the buildings nearby,\u201d the duty officer at the Ghatkopar police station said.<\/p>\n
The 22-year old 12-seater aircraft was owned by UY Aviation which purchased it from the Uttar Pradesh Government in 2014.<\/p>\n
UY Aviation, which is in the airplane charter business, is run by the Kothari family, who are promoters of Pan Parag pan masala, and the controversial Rotomac companies.<\/p>\n
UY Aviation in a statement said the aircraft was on a maintenance flight from the Juhu airport and had crashed shortly before it was to land.<\/p>\n
According to the company, the pilot was earlier employed with Jet Airways and had logged in more than 5000 hours of flying experience.<\/p>\n
Former Union Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel said the pilot\u2019s presence of mind to bring down the aircraft on an under-construction building prevented a bigger tragedy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mumbai Five people, including the pilots and crew, lost their lives and two bystanders injured after a Beechcraft King Air C90 turboprop aircraft crashed into an under-construction building at Ghatkopar in suburban Mumbai this afternoon, police and fire officials said. The deceased have been identified as pilot Maria Zuber, co-pilot Pradeep Rajput, and aircraft maintenance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35579,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[312],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35578"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35580,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35578\/revisions\/35580"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}