The tragic crash of Air India’s Vande Bharat Rescue Mission Flight IX-1344 that took place at the Kozhikode airport on Friday night has sent shockwaves across the nation. However, the pilot Dipak Vasant Sathe has earned posthumous applause for having saved several lives with his quick thinking, and sacrificial act.
In a sincere and heartfelt post on Facebook, pilot Sathe’s cousin Nilesh Sathe, who is a financial advisor to the National Highways Authority of India, writes that the pilot of the Air India Express plane crash at Kozhikode airport on Friday night was proud of the repatriation duty he had undertaken to fetch fellow-Indians who had been stranded abroad due to the COVID-19 crisis across the world.
Quoting The late pilot’s cousin:
“What is learnt is as follows: Landing gears didn’t work. Ex IAF pilot made three rounds of the airport to empty the fuel which saved the plane from catching fire. That’s why there was no smoke seen coming from the crashed aircraft. He turned off the engine right before the crash. He belly-landed after the 3rd iteration. The right-wing was ruptured. The Pilot martyred but saved the lives of 180 co-passengers.”
Of the 190 onboard that ill-fated flight, 58-year-old Wing Commander (Retd) Dipak Sathe, co-pilot Akhilesh Kumar and 16 others perished. About 125 are admitted injured to hospital. It was a miraculous escape for the survivors as the plane skidded into a valley from the table-top airport’s runway and split into two.
Equally tragic is the death of young co-pilot Akhilesh Kumar who leaves a pregnant wife behind in his hometown Mathura, Uttar Pradesh.
Wing Commander Sathe, a decorated former India Air Force pilot, had also served with No.17 Squadron, Golden Arrows, which was recently recommissioned with the Rafale fighter jet. His squadron had also participated in the Kargil War.
Sathe, survived an air crash in the early nineties when he was in the Airforce. He was hospitalised for 6 months due to multiple skull injuries and nobody thought that he will fly again. But his strong will power and love for flying made him clear the test again.
Illustrious career as a fighter pilot:
DV Sathe had won the winner of the “Sword of Honour” at the passing-out ceremony of the Air Force Academy at Dundigal near Hyderabad. An NDA alumnus, he had been commissioned into the Air Force in 1981 and retired voluntarily and prematurely as a Wing Commander in 2003, and later joined Air India as a Commercial pilot in 2005.
Dipak Sathe belongs to a Defence family. Retired Colonel Vasant Sathe and his wife Neela Sathe must now bear the loss of their last surviving son. The couple lives in Nagpur, Maharashtra and had already braved the loss of another son – Vikas Sathe – also an Army officer who lost his life while serving in Jammu region.
A “Happy Birthday, Mamma!” surprise that never happened:
The sad twist is that he had planned to pay a surprise visit to his mother on Saturday on account of her 84th birthday. Living in Mumbai with wife, the loving son had last met his mother in March and had kept warning her to “Stay at home, Stay safe” amid the coronavirus outbreak.
“He was very helpful and would do anything for others. During the Gujarat floods, he had saved the children of servicemen by carrying them on his shoulders. He was a very bright officer,” recalls the grieving mother.
Dipak Vasant Sathe is survived by his wife and two sons – both IIT Mumbai pass-outs.
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