Chartered plane skids off at Nanded airport

Aurangabad: A charter plane , carrying medicos from Mumbai, skidded off the runway after landing at Shri Guru Gobind Singh Ji Airport in Nanded on Thursday.

The charter plane along with an air ambulance had come from Mumbai for harvesting organs of a brain-dead patient and taking it back to the financial capital where two patients were waiting for heart and liver transplant.

A doctor, privy to the overall process, said that team of doctors had come to Nanded after a 22-year-old youth, Om Kale, was declared brain dead. Before the doctors could reach the hospital and harvest his organs, the youth had passed away.

Owing to this, the surgery on patients in Mumbai was also cancelled. Airport authorities could not be reached for comments, but sources informed that all the five passengers, including the pilot and co-pilot, did not sustain any injury.

Preliminary reports suggest that presence of water on the runway led to the plane skidding off the run way. Soon after the incident, fire brigade teams and technical experts were rushed to the spot for carrying out on-site repair of the charter.

The accident forced the authorities to call off operations at the airport on Thursday and Friday. This has affected the movement of flights connecting Nanded with Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chandigarh and Delhi.

Sources confirmed that an internal inquiry has been ordered into the incident. In the second half of Friday, efforts were on to put back the charter plane on the runway with the help of a crane.