July 3: A Fokker 27 cargo aircraft belonging to the Elbee Courier services crashed off Malwani-Madh area in suburban Mumbai early this morning shortly after take-off. The fate of the pilot and co-pilot are still unknown, though aviation sources say their chances of survival are slim.According to airport sources, the souped-up 19-seater aircraft refitted to carry cargo fell into the sea even as it was climbing. It had reached an altitude of 1200 feet and still ascending when its commander, Hitendra Majumdar, informed the Air Traffic Control that he was deviating towards the left due to the weather. However, Coast Guard (CG) sources told Express Newsline the pilot turned right instead. The contradiction was attributed to human error. Shortly afterwards, the aircraft plunged into the sea.Captain Majumdar and co-pilot Paresh Balsara had more than 9000 hours and 820 hours of flying experience respectively.Although airport sources say there was no distress signal, unconfirmed reports indicate that the commander of a Cathay Pacific aircraft passing overhead heard the distress signal, `Mayday, Mayday', uttered by the captain of the freighter.The twin-engined Fokker 27, VT SSA aircraft was flying on the Delhi-Mumbai-Bangalore-Madras route, according to company employees at the airport. Its cargo weighed nearly 500 tonnes. According to a communication from Elbee Airlines which owns the aircraft, efforts are being made with the assistance of the CG and the Indian Navy to retrieve the cockpit voice recorder or `black box' of the aircraft from the wreckage.According to Elbee, the aircraft, manufactured in May 1984, had recently undergone an FRC Check 2-A along with a certificate of airworthiness which was revalidated upto June 28, 1998. The last major 2C check was done on January 27 this year, the company claimed.Airport officials said the crew of another Elbee F-27 flight to Delhi, which had taken off two minutes earlier than the ill-fated aircraft, was first alerted by the ATC to carry out a search of the area. All through the day, the fishermen in the Malwani-Madh area reported aircrafts and helicopters hovering above the sea.Senior officials of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation have landed in Mumbai to conduct an investigation into the incident.Airport sources say the airline has three Fokker 27 aircrafts, of which one is under repairs and the other is deployed in Madras. The search and rescue operations for the crashed Fokker 27 belonging to Elbee Airlines was severely hampered by bad weather. According to Coast Guard (CG) sources, the sunrise to sunset operation could begin only after 7 a.m., four hours after the crash, as the air traffic controllers at Mumbai airport waited for the aircraft to resume contact with the control tower. The ATC reportedly attributed loss of contact with the aircraft to signal failure caused by bad weather.On its part, the CG had to requisition a Dornier aircraft from its airbase in Daman, 190 kms away from Mumbai. After this sortie drew a blank, the Coast guard pressed in a Chetak helicopter to conduct two sorties at 11am and 2 pm respectively. The cargo of the freighter, courier bag beloning to Airfreight Ltd, was first sighted almost 12 hours after the crash. The Coast Guard then conducted a third sortie at 4 pm which resulted the finding of the crashed aircraft's luggage half a nautical mile off Malwani. Though CG divers were lowered into the water, all they found was more wreckage. Much of the cargo consisted of share certificates belonging to companies like Tata Iron and Steel Company Ltd and the Madras-based TVS group. Also part of the package was correspondence from the Reserve Bank of India to various corporate houses.CG sources feel that the chances of the two pilots surviving the crash are slim. However a CG vessel, CGS Vigrah will search for survivors all night. Operations to recover the `Black Box' and the two bodies will commence tomorrow.
