39-year-old aircraft with 6,600 flight hours: Major details emerge about Jharkhand air ambulance crash

The air ambulance that crashed in Jharkhand, claiming the lives of all seven people on board, was a 39-year-old Beechcraft aircraft with more than 6,600 flying hours, officials said, HT reported. The seven-seater aircraft crashed in the Palamau of Jharkhand on the night of February 23 while operating a medical emergency flight from Ranchi to Delhi.

The crashed aircraft, a Beechcraft King Air BE9L operated by Delhi-based Redbird Airways Pvt Ltd., took off from Ranchi at 7:11 pm and was scheduled to land at Delhi at 10 PM. But it lost contact with Air Traffic Control (ATC) at 7.34 PM.

Those who died during the accident include a 41-year-old patient identified as Sanjay Kumar, his wife Archana Devi and a family member, Dhuru Kumar; a doctor; a paramedic; pilot-in-command Vivek Vikash Bhagat, with flying experience of around 1,400 hours; and first officer Savrajdeep Singh, who had nearly 450 hours of experience.

"Redbird Airways operated the aircraft, a Beechcraft C90A (King Air) twin-turboprop registered VT-AJV, which was manufactured in 1987 and had accumulated around 6,610 hours of airframe time at the time of the accident," an official said, adding that the plane wasn't overused.

“It was powered by P&W PT6A-21 engines and had logged around 2,900 hours on the left engine and 2,800 hours on the right engine,” he added. “Both propellers had completed around 2,500 hours each, and their latest Airworthiness Review Certificate (ARC) was issued on January 21 this year and was valid for a year,” another official said.

The crashed flight did not have a 'black box'

The aircraft left Ranchi's Birsa Munda Airport at around 7:11 pm for Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) of Delhi. A second official confirmed that the crew sought a weather deviation shortly after take-off. “Communication and radar contact were lost approximately 23 minutes after departure. The aircraft later crashed in a forested area near Simaria in Chatra district,” he said.

Additionally, the aircraft’s maximum take-off weight was 4,583 kg, but it did not have a black box (cockpit voice recorder (CVR) & digital flight data recorder (DFDR). “In this aircraft, a CVR and FDR were not installed as per CAR (Civil Aviation Requirements). The first Certificate of Airworthiness (C of A) for the aircraft was issued in 1987. There was no mandatory regulatory requirement for installation of a CVR or FDR at the time of its original certification,” another official added.