Veteran pilot who flew back hijacked IC 814 home back now Star Air COO

NEW DELHI: Captain SPS Suri, who flew back the hijacked IC 814 from Kandahar to Delhi on Jan 1, 2000, has been appointed the chief operating officer of India’s biggest regional airline Star Air. Former director operations of erstwhile Air India who worked with SpiceJet for nearly a decade after retiring from AI in Nov 2014, Captain Suri (now 69) had spent a night in Kandahar with Captain J R D Rao and two engineers from IA after a relief aircraft flew back the crew and passengers of IC 814 to Delhi on Dec 31, 1999.

Sanjay Godawat group’s Star Air has major growth plans and could place a sizable order for Embraer aircraft next year. Currently operating a fleet of 11 Embraers, it has set a target having 50 aircraft and choppers in its fleet by 2030. Captain Suri has flown the Avro, B737 classic, NG & MAX, Airbus A300, A330, B737 NG & MAX and earned 32,700 flying hours in a career which started in 1978. Pilots can fly till they turn 65. He joins Star Air as it enters the growth phase.

Captain Suri had travelled on an erstwhile Indian Airlines (IA) Airbus A320 relief flight from Delhi to Kandahar with negotiators and a team of extra crew members on Dec 26, 1999. On the morning of January 1, 2000, — when the Taliban had let the hijackers go — Captain Suri said he wanted to leave but was denied permission to take off. After landing in Kandahar, Captain Suri and 25-30 other crew members used to sleep in the A320. But on Dec 31, that aircraft took off for Delhi and sleeping inside the hijacked A300 that had terrible stench by then was not possible for the four IA crew left behind.

“The Taliban said rooms in Kandahar airport were taken by the hijackers and ISI. They allowed the four of us to spend the night by a bonfire in a verandah. “We were shivering there. ‘Sardar, badaam kha le. Raat kat jayegi’, Taliban leader Mullah Omar told us while giving we four almonds,” Suri had some years back told TOI.

The next (January 1) morning, an air traffic controller told this four-member crew that they will not get permission to leave for India. “The plane battery was at 7%. Taking Wahe Guru’s name, we started one engine and it miraculously came to life. While taxiing out, we started the other engine. The ATC kept telling us we didn’t have clearance to take off but we got airborne anyway,” Suri had said.

Pakistan ATC warned the aircraft did not have permission to overfly. And the crew of Delhi-bound IC 814 (D) — a delayed flight in aviation parlance — kept saying they were unable to hear anything. “The best thing we heard was the IAF controller telling us ‘welcome home, you are cleared straight for Delhi,’ just before entering the Indian airspace,” Suri had recalled.


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