The family of Captain Deepak Sathe, who died when an Air India Express flight crashed at the Kozhikode airport on August 7 last year, is still waiting for compensation from the government. Deepak Sathe’s son Dhananjay wrote on Twitter on Thursday that it has been 10 months since his father’s death and “individuals in employee compensation commissioner office (Mumbai, BKC) are misguiding and setting up hoops for my mother in the middle of a pandemic”.
A day after the crash, the Union and the Kerala government had announced Rs 10 lakh compensation each to the families of those who died in the crash. An Air India Express flight from Dubai with 190 people, including its six-member crew, overshot the tabletop runway during landing at the Kozhikode airport amid heavy rains on the evening of August 7 last year.
The narrow-body B737 plane fell into a valley 35 feet below and broke into pieces, killing 21 people, including both pilots. Responding to Dhananjay Sathe’s tweet on Friday, the Ministry of Civil Aviation said on Twitter that the Aviation Secretary has contacted Maharashtra’s Chief Secretary over the issue of employee compensation of late Captain Dipak Sathe.
“The compensation amount was deposited by Air India with Employees Compensation Commissioner Pallakkad, Kerala. It was then transferred to Employees Compensation Commissioner, Bandra on request of your relatives,” the ministry noted. “It can be disbursed after filing claim by legal heir of the deceased employee before the said authority. It is statutory provision which needs to be followed,” it added.
A five-member panel of Aircraft Accident Investigation Board (AAIB), formed on August 13 last year, is inquiring into the circumstances of the crash. It has not submitted its report yet. Captain S S Chahar, a former DGCA-designated examiner for pilots of B737NG aircraft, is the investigator-in-charge of the panel.
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