2 planes had taken off from Ranchi minutes before crash

NEW DELHI: Two aircraft, one each of Air India and IndiGo, had taken off safely from RanchiMonday night around the same time as the ill-fated air ambulance that crashed soon after getting airborne.

After climbing to 6,000 feet, the pilots of the air ambulance had sought weather deviation from Kolkata ATC and then the Beechcraft C90 aircraft VT-AJV crashed.

Ranchi was having bad weather at that time, with cumulonimbus (thunderstorm) clouds at 3,000 feet. An IndiGo aircraft had taken off eight minutes before the air ambulance crashed. "After getting airborne and in a couple of minutes when the IndiGo aircraft was about 37 km away from Ranchi airport, it had requested a right turn to avoid weather," sources said.

Unfortunately, the small air ambulance crashed just eight minutes after the relatively bigger airliners had flown away safely in this weather. The ill-fated Beechcraft C90 of Redbird Airways Pvt Ltd was operating as an air ambulance from Ranchi to Delhi. -

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