Did profit motive lead to the Mumbai plane crash?

Both Captain Pradeep Singh Rajput and co-pilot Marya Zuberi (47) were sure that permission for the flight would not be given because of the weather conditions in Mumbai on Thursday. Marya Zuberi’s husband in a statement recalls that his wife had confidently said that she would return sooner than expected because conditions were just not right.

Yet the test flight was cleared and the plane, more than 20 years old and which was sold off by the Uttar Pradesh Government, did take off but crashed soon thereafter.

The distraught family of the co-pilot wants answers and a probe into the circumstances under which the flight took off.

In a statement the family lamented that no one from the government and other agencies concerned had approached them till Friday afternoon.

“We know that the aircraft was well beyond its prime. We know it was more than 20 years old and it had already had an accident in 2009 and that the Uttar Pradesh government chose to sell it rather than spend on its repairs. Considering all the above stated facts we the family of Marya Zuberi want answers,” said Marya’s husband, Prabhat Kathuria and her family in a joint statement.

Marya Zuberi had the experience of flying for over a thousand hours. A former pilot with Jet Airways, she had been flying for 17 years.

Her husband remembered that on Thursday morning, when his wife left home, she was sanguine that weather conditions were not right for the test flight of a small plane such as Beechcraft King Air C90 (VT-UPZ) aircraft twin turboprop.

He claimed that DGCA norms don’t permit test flights of small planes in rainy weather and wondered, “who then let such a flight take place. Is the agency culpable? Did officers within the agency allow the flight, that clearly flouted its norms. We want to know who took the call, who signed the papers for the flight to take place from the DGCA’s side?”

“Indemar the company involved in the ill fated plane’s repairs seems to have been incapable of detecting the technical snags that could have led to its crash. We want to know whether their technical teams are capable of detecting technical snags or not and whether profit motives superseded the need for diligence before letting such a plane off the ground,” the statement adds.

Wondering as to how many agencies are at fault, he further said: “We’re in shock and so must be the family members of all those who lost their lives on the ill-fated flight. We had expected a call, a word, a message, anything at all from those who run these various companies and agencies. But so far the government and the companies have both failed us as well the families of other victims.”

Meanwhile, the Indian Express reported that “The Mumbai-based company, which owned the Beechcraft King C90 aircraft had spent close to ₹8 crore to repair the 22-year-old plane after it had been purchased from the Uttar Pradesh government in 2015. The repairs included new spare parts and various maintenance requirements, said sources. Thursday’s sortie was the first test flight of the aircraft after a repair-and-maintenance period of nearly three years.”