A woman pilot averted
an air tragedy on Sunday by her deft handling of a Guwahati-bound aircraft
after it lost one of its nosewheels during takeoff from the Kumbhirgram airport
in Silchar.
The ATR aircraft had
48 passengers. Its five-member crew comprised three women, including the pilot.
Captain Urmila Yadav,
circled the Air India flight AI-9760 over the Lokapriya Gopinath Bardoloi
International (LGBI) airport here for about one hour before she made a skilful
emergency landing.
Earlier she asked the
crew to shift some goods from the cockpit to the rear to reduce the load on the
front, to facilitate safe landing.
The passengers thanked
the pilot for saving their lives.
Gogoi's pat for
pilot
Chief Minister Tarun
Gogoi congratulated Captain Urmila and co-pilot Yashu. “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 only when the crew gave flight safety demonstration
for the second time after flying for about 30 minutes.
“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 woman passenger seated in front of me fainted
and several passengers started crying. I was calm and composed, leaving
everything to God.
“We came to know that
the aircraft flew extra time to burn fuel midair and as soon as the aircraft
landed the engine was switched off. It came to a 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. It 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 or 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 handled the entire situation very well. If the aircraft had made a
normal landing without knowing that one of its nose wheels was missing then
anything could have happened,” said an ATC official.
The scheduled
departure of the flight from Silchar was 7.20 a.m. but it was delayed due to
inclement weather. The flight took off at 9 a.m.
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