Scores of children playing in North East Delhi’s Shastri Park were flabbergasted when two Indian Air Force (IAF) pilots made an emergency landing of a two-seater microlite aircraft in their local playground on
Sunday morning. Within minutes, the news of aircraft W-3413, weighing around 5 tonnes, landing in the park spread like wildfire and hundreds of curious locals gathered at the ground to catch a glimpse of the lightweight fixed-wing aircraft. Police had a tough time managing the groundswell and used ropes to cordon off the area and keep onlookers away from the aircraft.
A senior police officer said that the aircraft, belonging to the National Cadet Corps (NCC) wing of the Indian Air Force, had taken off from Hindon airbase for checking bird activity around the base where the IAF was carrying out the full dress rehearsal of its 81st IAF Day parade.
Preliminary investigation revealed that engine failure caused the forced landing. Pilot Bidyut Ghosh and his co-pilot were safe and no one on the ground was injured as well.
“At 8.30 am, we left from HAFS and at 10.26 am, we came to know about the engine failure. Without wasting time, we informed the Air Traffic Controller (ATC) at HAFS and with the help of their guidance, we landed in a residential area. Earlier, we had decided to land at one corner of the park, but as it was a Sunday and a lot of children were playing there, we had to land at the end side of the park,” said Ghosh.
After the emergency landing, the children got scared and started pelting stones at the plane. Many had climbed on to the plane as well. Pilots tried to stop them and made a call to the Police Control Room at 10.35 am.
“After receiving the PCR call, around 100 police personnel along with fire tenders reached the spot immediately,” said the officer, adding that during the investigation, they learnt that it was the pilot, who saved the plane from crash landing in the residential area as he had just two minutes after engine of the plane detected a snag mid-air when the plane was at a height of 1,000 feet.
A senior IAF official said that the microlite aircraft is generally used for training National Cadet Corps. “It was a microlite plane of NCC which carried out a precautionary landing due to a technical snafu,” added the officer.
Some Air Force officials arrived at the spot around 1.30 pm and the microlite plane was carted onto a truck to get it back to the Hindon airbase. The IAF engineers, who were called in, dismantled the craft and took it back in a truck around 2.45 pm.
One resident Raju, who witnessed the incident, said, “I was very scared and thought it was a terrorist attack, but later realised that the pilot was trying to avoid buildings.”