A plane carrying Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar – a chartered Learjet 45 private jet – crashed near Baramati airport Wednesday morning, killing all five people on board.
The plane left Mumbai at 8.10 am and should have landed in Baramati within the hour; under normal circumstances the flying time between the two airports is around 45 minutes.
However, at 8.46 am – feed from a CCTV camera near the airport confirmed the time – the aircraft crashed 100 feet short of the runway. Twelve minutes earlier it had stopped transmitting ADS-B radio signals, routine transmissions that verify an aircraft's speed and location.
A Civil Aviation Ministry statement also outlined the sequence of events leading to the crash, including a potentially worrying point – that the pilot 'did not give readback of landing clearance'.
READ | "No Readback Of Landing Clearance": Final Moments On Pawar's Plane
In simple terms, there was no message, as is protocol worldwide, repeating landing authorisation.
What is 'readback'
According to SKYbrary – 'an electronic repository of safety knowledge related to flight operations, air traffic management, and aviation safety' – 'readback' is simply the repeating of a message, in full or partly, to the air traffic controller to confirm receipt and understanding.
This allows the aircraft crew and the ATC to ensure they are operating in sync while managing the former flies the plane and the latter manages air space around them.
What is 'readback'? Credit: SKYbrary.aero
'Readback' is also critical while the plane is landing because it allows the pilot and ATC to establish which runway is being used, what the weather conditions are, and what traffic is on the ground and in the immediate vicinity of the plane as it lands.
The ministry said the Learjet pilot – Captain Shambhavi Pathak, who is believed to have completed her commercial pilot and flight crew training at an institute in New Zealand, with additional training from a simulation centre in Jordan – failed to provide that readback.
Why is 'readback' important?
This is a critical step in landing, or even in-flight, protocol for pilots to ensure information transmitted by the ATC is received accurately. Any deviation from these instructions, which ATCs might not notice immediately. could prove catastrophic, as it seems to have in this case.
According to SKYbrary the following elements of ATC messages must be read back.
- Route clearances,
- Clearances and instructions to enter airspace over an airport, to land on or take off from a runway, or any other flight movement,
- Instructions about managing or altering speed, altitude, and heading, and
- Any other messages, including conditional clearances.
All of these must be read back so ATCs are sure the pilot has understood the message.
And ATCs, in turn, are responsible for hearing these messages and correcting any discrepancies between their instructions to the pilots and what the pilots understood.
What happened
At 8.18 am the plane, owned by VSR Ventures Pvt Ltd, a Delhi-based non-scheduled air transport operator, and registered as VT-SSK, established contact with the Baramati airport.
The flight path of the plane that crashed. Credit: Flightradar24
At this time, Pathak was advised of weather conditions and advised to land at her discretion.
Pathak, the government statement said, asked about winds and visibility – standard questions pilots world over pose to ground staff or ATCs before landing.
She was told visibility was around 3000 metres, or three kilometres, which aviation experts told NDTV is considered 'fairly standard and enough to attempt a landing'.
The aircraft then reported its final approach to Runway 11.
Immediately afterwards, the pilot indicated the landing strip was 'not in sight' and was told to initiate a go-around, which is SOP if an initial landing is aborted at any time till the plane comes to a full stop.
READ | Pawar's Plane Was Attempting 2nd Approach To Airport When It Crashed
After the go-around the plane was asked, again, about its position and the pilot reported final approach. Confirmation the runway was now visible was asked and given.
And the plane was then cleared to land; this was at 8.34 am.
However, and this is the contentious point, there was no readback of landing clearance.
The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, or AAIB, has now taken over the probe.
NDTV Special | Ajit Pawar, The No-Nonsense 'Dada' Of Maharashtra Politics
Pawar leaves behind his wife Sunetra, a Rajya Sabha MP, and two sons, Parth and Jay, and a political legacy spanning over three decades, including the infamous splitting of uncle Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party in July 2023 and aligning with the BJP to form the state government.
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