New Delhi: A flying instructor and a trainee pilot were killed on Thursday after their training aircraft crashed in an open field near Natthupurwa village, close to the Ganga Barrage in Kanpur. The four-seat, twin-engine Tecnam aircraft came down shortly before noon, around 20 minutes after taking off on an instructional flight.
The Kanpur Police commissioner, Raghuveer Lal, identified the instructor as Sachin Bhatia, a resident of Gujarat, and the trainee as Abhishek Pujari from Karnataka. Both were found dead after police and emergency personnel reached the crash site, according to information provided by the commissioner to reporters.
The aircraft took off from the Garg Aviation Training Centre at about 11.30am and was returning to the facility when it crashed at approximately 11.50am, Lal said. Preliminary accounts suggest the plane lost control over the Ganga riverbank area before striking the field, although aviation authorities have not established the sequence of events.
Residents reported hearing a loud sound shortly before the aircraft came down, prompting people from nearby areas to gather at the site. It remains unclear whether the sound originated from the aircraft, resulted from its initial impact or had any connection with the cause of the accident.
Police and district officials cordoned off the wreckage area to prevent interference with evidence and removed the bodies for the required medico-legal procedures. Visuals from the site showed the aircraft extensively damaged in the field as police, firefighters and other emergency personnel conducted their initial response.
Bhatia was an experienced instructor with about 3,000 flying hours, according to the police commissioner. The Tecnam aircraft had reportedly been brought to the Kanpur training centre in 2023, although its precise model, registration and maintenance history had not been officially disclosed at the time of writing.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has been informed and is expected to begin a detailed technical examination of the accident. Investigators are likely to study the wreckage, engines, flight controls, maintenance records, weather conditions, available air-traffic information and the conduct of the flight before reaching any conclusion.
The cause remains undetermined, and early suggestions involving mechanical failure, weather or pilot action would be speculative without supporting evidence. A twin-engine aircraft may offer redundancy after the failure of one engine, but investigators must establish whether any powerplant, structural, control or operational problem occurred and how the crew responded.
Earlier safety incident at Kanpur flying school
The crash comes two months after a trainee pilot was injured in a separate occurrence involving Garg Aviation at Kanpur’s Chakeri airport. On June 26, the female trainee was struck on the back by a rotating propeller after leaving a Tecnam P2006T, registered VT-NBV, following a night instructional sortie.
The DGCA subsequently de-rostered the instructor involved in that occurrence and ordered that the aircraft should not be flown while the inquiry was under way. There is no evidence at present linking the June ground-safety incident with Thursday’s fatal crash, and the aircraft involved in the latest accident has not officially been identified as VT-NBV.
The Tecnam P2006T family comprises four-seat, twin-engine light aircraft widely used for multi-engine and advanced commercial-pilot training. The manufacturer describes the type as having retractable landing gear, variable-pitch propellers and systems intended to prepare trainees for more complex aircraft operations.
The investigation will be central to determining whether the Kanpur crash arose from a technical defect, an operational event, environmental conditions or a combination of factors. Any broader assessment of the flying school’s safety systems will similarly have to await evidence gathered by the aviation authorities.