Kanpur training aircraft crash leaves two pilots dead

Tragedy struck Uttar Pradesh on Thursday morning when a twin-engine Tecnam P2006T training aircraft crashed into an open field near Kanpur, claiming the lives of both pilots on board. Instructor pilot Sachin Bhatia, a Gujarat native boasting roughly 3,000 hours of logged flying experience, and young trainee Abhishek Pujari from Karnataka died instantly upon impact. Local police confirmed the four-seater plane plummeted into an agricultural zone near Natthupurwa village, situated closely to the Ganga Barrage.

Routine Sortie Turns Fatal

Flight logs indicate the aircraft departed from the Garg Aviation Training Center at exactly 11:30 AM for a standard instructional flight. Operations appeared perfectly normal for a brief window before disaster occurred. At approximately 11:50 AM, just twenty minutes after clearing the runway, the aircraft lost altitude rapidly. Local villagers reported hearing a loud mechanical failure and subsequent explosion as the plane struck the ground. Kanpur Police Commissioner Raghuveer Lal swiftly mobilised emergency response units to the remote site, where officers pulled the victims from the damaged fuselage and secured the perimeter.

Aviation safety experts from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation have taken over the technical inquiry to uncover the exact sequence of mechanical or human errors that triggered this catastrophe. Records show the academy acquired this specific Tecnam aircraft for pilot training purposes in 2023. This fatal accident happens barely two months after a separate safety incident at the same Kanpur flying school, where a female cadet suffered severe injuries from a running propeller. Law enforcement personnel remain stationed at the wreckage site to ensure no evidence is tampered with before federal inspectors conclude their preliminary on-ground evaluation.

With Inputs from Agency Threads and Photo Courtesy: ANI