Chartered plane crashes in Aligarh, six on board safe

A chartered plane from Delhi crashed while landing near the Dhanipur airstrip of the air training centre here on Tuesday, with all six persons on board escaping unhurt, a senior official said.

The chartered plane was bringing a technician and some equipment for repair of an aircraft at the air training centre from Delhi when it crashed.

Additional District Magistrate Ranjit Singh said all the six persons on board, including the pilot, were safe.

According to a preliminary inquiry, the plane touched a high tension wire and crashed.

Fire tenders were rushed to the spot to douse the flames, the ADM added.

Senior officials of the State Electricity Department, who rushed to the incident site, said an error of judgement on the part of the pilot may have led to the crash.

Senior engineer in the state electricity department Dharmendra Saraswat told reporters at the accident spot that "according to preliminary reports, the pilot tried to land at a strip of the runway which is still not operational."

He said the existing runway at Dhanipur is being expanded and work of shifting the 33 KVA high tension cable is still "not complete".

Instead of landing at the regular run way, the pilot tried to land on the "non commissioned airstrip," he said.

Work on shifting the existing cable "would take another week before it is shifted underground," Saraswat added.