The captain of doomed Air India Flight 171 has been praised for saving dozens of lives by guiding the jet away from a row of apartment blocks moments before impact.
Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, an experienced pilot with more than 8,200 hours in the cockpit, was at the controls when his Boeing 787 Dreamliner bound for London Gatwick crashed seconds after leaving India's Ahmedabad airport on Thursday.
He and co-pilot First Officer Clive Kunder placed a mayday call, but they had little over a minute after the engines lost power before ploughing into the ground.
The passenger jet was headed towards the B.J. Medical College and Civil Hospital and a street of residential properties nearby, until the powerless aircraft banked slightly seconds before it hit the ground and exploded.
All but one of the 242 passengers and crew members on board were killed.
Several medical students were also killed when the aircraft's landing gear and part of the rear of the jet clipped a dormitory for medical students working at the hospital.
But residents of the nearby apartments hailed Captain Sabharwal, 56, as a hero for avoiding their homes and saving yet more lives in the process.
'Thanks to the pilot Captain Sabharwal, we survived. He's a hero. It is because of him we are alive,' resident Jahanvi Rajput, 28, told The Sun.
'The green space next to us was visible to him and that's where he went.'
Mum-of-two Chancal Bai, 50, added: 'If the plane had crashed into this residential area, there would have been hundreds more victims.'
It comes as an Indian politician revealed the fallen captain had told his elderly father just days before the fatal crash that he was planning to quit flying so he could take care of him.
The tragic turn of events was made public by Member of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly Dilip Lande, who paid a visit to Captain Sabharwal's 82-year-old father at his home that he shared with his late son in the Powai suburb of Mumbai.
Only a few days ago (Captain Sabharwal) told his father that he will be quitting his job to look after him full time,' Lande told reporters.
The Captain's father, who worked for India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) prior to his retirement, was reportedly inconsolable upon learning of his son's fate.
Whenever he flew out, Sumeet would ask us to keep an eye on his father. He has now been left devastated,' neighbours told The Hindustan Times.
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