Six people were injured after a single-engine, nine-seater aircraft belonging to a private airline crash-landed at Kansor near Jalda, around 20km from Rourkela, on Saturday afternoon.
The pilot chose an open field near the Rourkela airstrip to land the aircraft on its belly. It is not immediately clear if the aircraft had developed a technical snag.
The injured have been identified as Anita Sahoo, 50, Sabita Agarwal, 35, Sunil Agarwal, 40, Susanta Kumar Biswal, 46, Captain Naveen Kadanga, 46, and co-pilot Tarun Shrivastava, 46.
The district administrative team rescued the injured with the help of locals and shifted them to hospitals in Rourkela.
Odisha transport minister Bhibhuti Bhusan Jena said: “All the passengers are undergoing treatment and are safe... The India One Air type of aircraft (Caravan 208) bearing registration VT-KSS was flying from Bhubaneswar to Rourkela. It departed at 12.27pm and force-landed at a place near Jalda, eight nautical miles short of Rourkela. The pilots saved precious lives.”
Jena said the Directorate General of Civil Aviation had been informed. “The airline will be reporting the details to the DGCA and Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau for further action,” he said.
The DGCA, in a media release, said India One Air operated under the Centre’s UDAN scheme that aims to provide air connectivity to tier-2 and 3 cities. It said the pilot gave a Mayday call to Rourkela air traffic control at 1.14pm and made a forced
landing at 1.20pm.
Chief minister Mohan Charan Majhi posted on X: “I am deeply saddened to learn about the plane crash that occurred in Rourkela. The news that all passengers are safe by the grace of Lord Jagananth is reassuring.”
Former Indian Air Force officer Group Captain Sanjeeb Mohapatra said: “We don’t have any information on why the pilot decided to crash-land on an open airfield. Some technical snag must have developed. We need to wait for the details.”
Former Indian Airlines pilot, Captain Manmath Routray, said: “The Cessna Grand C208B aircraft has a good reputation. It has a reliable engine. A mechanical or technical glitch must have happened. The pilot did the right thing by
force-landing.”
