Student pilot from India die in US plane crash

Ojai, California, USA: A student pilot from India was practicing emergency maneuvers with an experienced instructor during a Thursday training flight before their plane crashed in Ojai, killing them both, the flight school’s co-owner said Friday.
Amit Ahire, 19, and Richard Anthony Prado, 51, were pronounced dead at the scene of the crash about 2:30 p.m. Thursday near Krotona Road on the campus of the Krotona Institute of Theosophy, said Armando Chavez, a county senior deputy medical examiner. Both men died of blunt-force injuries, autopsies determined.
It will likely be months before authorities officially determine what caused the crash, but some details emerged Friday from investigators and friends.
Ahire had come to the United States from a small village in India to earn his pilot’s wings at Aviation Pacific Inc., a flight school at the Camarillo Airport. He had been living in Oxnard only since Nov. 12, Chavez said.
With about 15 hours of air experience recorded during his two weeks of training, Ahire was on his fifth flight when he was killed, said Andrea Bortolon, co-owner of Aviation Pacific.
Hours before he died, Ahire was given his first set of headphones, a badge of honor among students that signals they are on their way to becoming pilots, Bortolon said.
The lesson of the day was practicing emergency maneuvers, including emergency landings and how to fly at low altitude, Bortolon said. Typically, that lesson includes putting the plane in idle and cutting the power, among other moves.
“If you go too slow, the plane’s nose can go down; that might be what happened,” Bortolon said, although adding that any number of unknown factors could have caused the crash.
The two-seat Piper Tomahawk left the Camarillo Airport about 1:30 p.m. Witnesses told Ventura County sheriff’s investigators the plane appeared to be having engine trouble before it went into a nose dive and hit the ground on a private road next to a group of homes. No injuries were reported on the ground, and no structures were damaged.
The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the crash.
Aviation Pacific had no major safety violations, although the FAA issued two minor administrative sanctions over the past two years, Gregor said. The sanctions involved a violation of an advertising regulation and a maintenance record issue.
Ahire was among a group of foreign students learning how to fly at Aviation Pacific. With offices in Mumbai, India, and Camarillo, the school specializes in training foreigners to fly, especially students from India.
11/12/09 Zeke Barlow, Adam Foxman/Ventura County Star, Camarillo, California, USA