Fifty-three people aboard a Guwahati-bound aircraft had a
miraculous escape on Sunday when the woman pilot averted a tragedy by
her deft handling of an emergency landing.The aircraft had lost one of
its nose wheels during takeoff from the Kumbhirgram airport in Silchar.
The ATR aircraft had 48 passengers. Its five-member crew comprised threewomen, including the pilot.
Captain
Urmila Yadav circled Air India flight AI-9760 over the Lokapriya
Gopinath Bardoloi International (LGBI) airport for about one hour and
asked the crew to shift some goods from the cockpit to the rear to
reduce the load to facilitate safe landing.
The passengers thanked the pilot for saving them.
Gogoi's pat for pilot
Chief
Minister Tarun Gogoi congratulated Captain Urmila and co-pilot Yashu
for saving the passengers' lives. “Hats off to you and your co-pilot for
your daring and courageous act which saved the precious lives of
passengers,” he told her over the phone, an official release said.
Narrating
his experience, noted Assamese linguist and a senior official of the
Assam Agricultural University Sumanta Chaliha told
The Hindu
the passengers got wind of the emergency situation when the crew gave
flight safety demonstration for the second time after flying for about
30 minutes.
He said:
“When we
asked the crew if anything had gone wrong, we were told that there was a
minor technical snag and it was being taken care of. However, after
some time they made a formal announcement of an emergency landing. We
came to know that the aircraft lost one of its nose wheels. A lady
passenger seated in front of me fainted and several passengers started
crying. I kept calm and composed, leaving everything to God.
“We
came to know that aircraft flew extra time to burn fuel midair and as
soon as the aircraft landed the engine was switched off and it came to
halt quickly. While getting down I noticed that one of the nose wheels
was missing.”
It was the Air Traffic Control (ATC) of
the Indian Air Force at Kumbhirgram which noticed that something had
fallen off the aircraft after it took off. They then alerted the LGBI
ATC.
“We knew that the aircraft was coming with a
wheel of nose assembly missing. The pilot was informed and asked if she
would land and fly off. When she said she would land, she was asked to
do a mandatory low pass so that the ground staff could inspect the nose
assembly. We requested her to hold over Guwahati for sometime till we
cleared the runway. A Kolkata-bound Spicejet flight was allowed to take
off and an in-coming Air India flight from Delhi allowed to land. After
the runway was cleared, the aircraft was allowed to land. The pilot
really did a skilful landing and did very good handling of the entire
situation. If the aircraft had made a normal landing without knowing
that one of its nose wheels is missing then anything could have
happened,” said an ATC official.
The scheduled
departure of the flight from Silchar was 7.20 a.m. but was delayed due
to inclement weather and the flight took off at 9 a.m.
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