Late Air India Pilot, Captain Deepak Sathe’s Traits Which Made Him A Real Hero By
Chirali Sharma
August 11, 2020
On 7th August a tragic accident took place where an Air India Express flight crashed at the Karipur Airport in Kozhikode, Kerala taking the lives of both its pilot and co-pilot along.
In total, 18 people had died that unfortunate day when the plane crashed due to bad weather that had made the runway slippery and led to the plane being unable to make a safe landing.
The flight coming from Dubai had 190 passengers onboard and it overshot the table-top runway at the airport due to heavy rains. This led to the plane crashing and breaking into two pieces with one falling in a valley almost 35-feet below.
News reported that pilot-in-command Captain Deepak Sathe had passed away instantly, while co-pilot Captain Abhishek Kumar succumbing to injuries later on.
Today the captain’s body was laid to rest in Mumbai with him getting full state honours and representatives from army, navy, coastguard, Mumbai police and city mayor along with his family members and some politicians too paying their respects to him.
Union civil aviation minister Hardeep Puri also stated that Pilot Sathe was one of the
“most experienced and distinguished commanders – Deepak Sathe. He had landed on this airfield as many as 27 times, including this year. He was a very accomplished, experienced, decorated person in command of the aircraft. There is absolutely no doubt over their competence.”
So here we take a look at some things that truly made him into an inspiration and not someone we should forget easily:
Sathe Probably Saved Many Lives
Many people often get confused at the low number of death rate in the crash considering how much damage to the aircraft there was.
However, it seems that might be because of the quick thinking of the pilots themselves more than anything.
Reports reveal that according to aviation experts, the decision by Sathe and Kumar to shut off the engines after touch down was very important since it ensured that the plane did not catch fire.
This eventually ended up saving the lives of many passengers who have died if the engines had caught fire and resulted in a bigger death rate.