Mumbai: It was a day like any other day for the 12 crew members of Air India flight 171 on Thursday. They prepared for another takeoff and another long-haul flight.
None of them realised it would be their last flight.
In an instant, the crash—in which all but one of the 230 passengers died—also ended the lives and dreams of all the crew members. Eight of the 12 were from Mumbai.
Among them was Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, a veteran pilot with almost three decades of flying experience.
Just a few days ago, Sabharwal told his father, who had retired from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), that he would be quitting his job and take care of him full-time.
It wasn’t meant to be for the 55-year-old resident of Powai, an experienced pilot with 8,200 flying hours under his belt.
Sabharwal had been a pilot since the early 1990s. His two nephews are pilots too. He was unmarried, and is survived by his father.
“The family is in no condition to talk,” the Shiv Sena MLA from Chandivali, Dilip Lande, told the media after visiting the family on Friday.
Sabharwal’s co-pilot, First Officer Clive Kunder, 32, still had miles to go in his career.
Kunder joined Air India just five years ago and had already logged 1,100 flying hours.
In many ways, Kunder was born into the world of flying—his mother was a flight attendant and he grew up in the Air India colony at Kalina in Mumbai’s Santacruz area.
A parishioner of Our Lady of Egypt Church in Kalina, the unmarried Kunder was a family friend of actor Vikrant Massey.
The rest of the crew also had their own stories.
Roshni Songhare, for instance, had fulfilled her childhood dream—to become a flight attendant.
The 26-year-old’s uncle said her mother worked as a helper in different houses to make sure her daughter fulfills her dreams. Her father was a technician.
“She had only one dream. And her parents made sure it was fulfilled. We all supported her. And she was the happiest when she became an airhostess,” said Pravin Sukhdare, her maternal uncle.
Songhare, a resident of Dombivali, began with SpiceJet and joined Air India last year.
She belonged to a modest household and started off in a small 10×10 ft room before eventually shifting to a one BHK House. Her younger brother works on a ship.
She had visited her hometown just two days ago for a religious event.
“It was very shocking for us too,” Datta Songhare, her paternal uncle, told the media. He also said that her family was looking to get her married by early next year.
A love marriage in Air India
Flight attendant Aparna Mahadik, a 40-year-old senior flight attendant, had a long association with Air India.
She was married to another crew member, Anmol, whom she met on the job.
“Both husband and wife were with Air India. Theirs is a love marriage and they met while working for Air India,” said Sanjay Tatkare, nephew of NCP leader Sunil Tatkare. Aparna was Sunil’s sister’s daughter-in-law.
She is survived by her husband, who she married in 2013, and their eight-year-old daughter.
Another young flight attendant, 22-year-old Maithili Patil, was also getting ready to spread her wings.
She had already come a long way from her village of Nhava in Panvel. The first air hostess from the village, Patil had been on the job for just two years, and only started her international journey two months ago. This was her seventh international flight.
All her family members have gone to Ahmedabad for DNA testing and identification.
Like many of the others, Deepak Pathak, a flight attendant in his mid-30s, also built his life around flying. The Badlapur resident had been a part of Air India’s crew for the past 11 years.
Pathak was also known to be active on social media. Married four years ago, he regularly posted his flight details and his Facebook profile described him as a music lover, adventurous and a devotional person.
“His habit was that he would update about his flight every time. Every day, he would message our mother about his whereabouts. Even that day, he wished her good morning and told her about the flight,” his sister, Shrutika Shejwal, told the media.
His friend, Yogesh Ubale, took to his Facebook page with a tribute describing him as an “inspiration and full of life”.
“Working for Air India, you always carried pride in your role, and it breaks my heart to know that you left us in such a tragic way, in the Ahmedabad-London flight crash today,” he wrote.
Other crew members also left behind families and unfulfilled dreams.
Cabin supervisor Shraddha Dhavan, 44, was a senior cabin supervisor with Air India. According to her LinkedIn profile, she joined Air India 21 years ago and has been working as an attendant with the airline since then.
She was a resident of Mulund. Her husband, Rajesh, is also in Air India as a crew member. She is survived by a 13-year-old daughter.
Saineeta Chakravarti was a 35-year-old flight attendant living in the fishing village of Juhu-Koliwada. Known affectionately as Pinky, she was an alumna of Manekji Cooper Education Trust School and Mithibai College in Mumbai.
As investigators search for answers, the families of the 12 crew members grieve, with questions that no enquiry can ever answer.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)