Mourners gathered on Tuesday for the funeral of Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, one of two pilots at the helm of the Air India flight bound for London Gatwick that crashed just outside Ahmedabad airport last week.
All but one of AI171’s 242 passengers and crew died after the Boeing 787 Dreamliner came down within 30 seconds of take-off, crashing into a building housing trainee medics at a major medical college. Only one passenger survived, and at least 29 people on the ground, including five medical students inside the hostel, were also killed.
Aged 56, Captain Sabharwal was a veteran pilot with 8,200 hours of flying experience. His mayday call to air traffic controllers was the last communication received from the cockpit before the crash, and local residents have called him a “hero” for diverting the plane away from a densely populated residential area, suggesting he could have saved hundreds of lives on the ground.
He lived with his parents in Mumbai’s Powai, and they received his remains on Tuesday morning after his identity was confirmed through DNA testing.
Officials said the casket carrying Captain Sabharwal’s remains reached Mumbai airport from Ahmedabad by a flight and were taken to his residence in Powai’s Jal Vayu Vihar.
Indian TV channels broadcast footage of the funeral at the pilot’s house, where his elderly father offered a final tribute to his son as friends and family gathered around.
"Only a few days ago, he told his father that he would be quitting his job to look after him full time," said Dilip Lande, a local Shiv Sena politician who visited the family to offer his condolences.
A friend of the family said Sabharwal was a “very grounded and a wonderful son”.
“He tried his best. He sacrificed his life to save others. I salute him,” a friend told NDTV news.
A neighbour of the Sabharwals recounted the pilot’s last message for them before he flew out.
"Whenever he flew out, Sumeet would ask us to keep an eye on his father. He has now been left devastated," a neighbour said, reported Hindustan Times.
Local residents near the scene of the crash said their three-storey apartment building was directly on the flight’s path and that Captain Sabharwal appeared to have swerved to avoid them in pursuit of open ground.
Jahanvi Rajput, 28, told The Sun that "thanks to the pilot Captain Sabharwal, we survived. He’s a hero. It is because of him we are alive.”
"The green space next to us was visible to him and that’s where he went," she said.
The flight instead crashed into the top floor of an accommodation block where medical students had assembled to eat lunch.
On Monday investigators recovered the flight’s cockpit voice recorder. Authorities suspect the crash was the result of an “extremely rare” loss of power from both engines at once, and will analyse both “black box” flight data recorders to help understand how that happened.
