The Hindu Business Line : They heard a loud thud

Crash site: Onlookers gather near the wreckage of a two-seater Cessna 152 aircraft of the Andhra Pradesh Aviation Academy which crashed during training sorties on the congested Noor Mohammed Colony streets in Sanathnagar in Hyderabad on Monday killing instructor Captain Neeraj Jain, and a trainee pilot P. Srinivas. - Mohammed Yousuf

K.V. Kurmanath

Hyderabad, Sept. 8 It was like all hell broken loose for Ms Madhavi, a 16-year-old intermediate student preparing for her quarterly examinations, and her father Mr Nageshwara Rao (45), when they heard a big thud on their roof of their single-room house.

Little did they know that the swirling wing of the Cessna trainer aircraft had ripped their roof apart. The two-seater aircraft of the AP Aviation Training Academy tripped and fell in the street behind their house.

Both Ms Madhavi, who fell unconscious for a while with a minor injury on her head, and her father were still in a state of shock, five hours after the mishap happened. Her mother, Ms Ramana, was among the few in the neighbourhood who mustered some courage and took up fire-fighting with the water and sand.

“My husband was pressing clothes and my daughter was studying inside the house when we heard the big noise. We initially thought, a bomb went off,” she said.

Mr Srinivas, an autorickshaw driver, who was late to work as he had to take his wife to hospital, too joined the effort to douse the flames.

Their efforts to rescue the pilot and trainer, however, could not fructify as they had already succumbed to the burn injuries.

As it crashed, the Cesna wing also damaged the parapet wall opposite Ms Madhavi’s house.

Panic

It was not a new sight for the locals to watch, listen and feel the aircraft movements as the colony is located on the Western side of the runway of the Begumpet airport. The airport, which was closed for commercial operations in March 2008, used to witness 240 air traffic movements.

But the crash of American-made Cesna 152 sent shockwaves among the locals. Luckily for them the bulk of aircraft hit the vacant street, while most of the kids were inside in the nearby school.

“They must have hit by a bird, or they must have tried to avoid one. In this process, they must have lowered the altitude. At this point, we could tell only this much,” Capt. S N Reddy, Chief Executive Officer of the academy, told Business Line.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people, including school children from nearby schools thronged the accident spot. The police sealed the roads leading to the site.

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