An aircraft of the Indian Army’s Officers’ Training Academy in Bihar’s Gaya, with two trainee pilots on board, crashed on Friday shortly after take-off, a senior official said.
According to Bangajeet Saha, the Director of Gaya International Airport, both pilots were safe.
The micro aircraft is said to have taken off from the Indian Army’s Officers Training Academy (OTA) in Gaya. After some distance, there was a technical fault in the aircraft, due to which it crashed in the fields.
He said the crash took place in fields adjoining a village under Bodh Gaya block when the pilots tried to make an emergency landing.
The aircraft’s fall was noticed by the villagers, They rushed to the spot and pulled the cadets out. Army personnel who arrived soon afterward took it away. Debris from the crashed plane was also collected by them.
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“The nature of the technical fault that might have caused the crash will be known only upon examination by experts,” the airport director said.
It should be mentioned here that the OTA is an Indian Army training facility that trains officers for the Short Service Commission(SSC). The first academy, founded in 1963, is located at Alandur in Chennai and another one was established in Bihar’s Gaya district in 2011. The academy trains graduate cadets for a period of 49-week before they get commissioned into the Indian Army.
(With inputs from ANI)
