'Sorry, we've lost contact with ATC'

TNN | Apr 27, 2015, 12.24 AM IST
ON BOARD FLIGHT 6E 31: There seemed to be quite a few who had at the last moment cancelled their IndiGo flight to Kathmandu from New Delhi on Sunday. They will be happy they did.
The flight, filled with journalists from all over the world and Nepalese citizens going home to meet their families, was on time as it took off at about 20 minutes past 11am. Amrit Sharma, a web entrepreneur settled in Minneapolis, was worried about his mother in Nepal. “I'm happy to be going home,” he said in a thick American accent. “Happy and sad.”
Behind him, two Nepalese men were discussing the extent of damage to their houses. One of them, possibly working in India, said he would have to “remain here for another 10 years.”

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Trouble suddenly started at around 12.45pm when the pilot announced that he had lost contact with the ATC in Kathmandu. Even as the passengers were turning to each other to see if they had understood correctly what he said, there was an explanation a minute later that did nothing to change the mood. “ATC has evacuated the building. We are not able to establish contact.”

Thousands of feet above ground, in the middle of nowhere, that didn't sound good at all. And that's a deliberate understatement.

Ten minutes after that the pilot took the mic again. “Hope you understand. It is beyond our control.” Everyone understood. There was no scope for confusion.

Another quake had hit Kathmandu, and the 6.9 magnitude tremor had forced everyone in the ATC building to run for their lives. So there was no one to guide the flight from Delhi.

But the plane kept going towards Kathmandu, the pilot hopeful that in the next few minutes the ATC men would perhaps come back and take control. That didn't happen. What did, instead, was the message that the runway had now closed. Kathmandu was just 20 minutes away. Another address to the passengers followed. At about 1.15pm, the pilot said that though they don't know the exact intensity of the latest jolt to hit the valley, “we have come to know it was stronger than yesterday”. After a silent five minutes, he came back on air, this time to say, “We are not allowed to land. We will have to divert to Delhi.”

Something resembling a muted yelp came out of Sharma. “My mother,” he said.

By 1.25pm, the flight was turning back for Delhi. It touched down at the capital at a little past 2pm, but no one was allowed to deplane. “Please remain in your seats,” a member of the cabin crew announced. “We are trying to see if it's possible to go back to Kathmandu.”

At 4.05pm, all passengers were still inside the plane. It had been five hours cooped up in the aircraft and people were getting restless. Half an hour later, the mic crackled to life again. “We have the clearance now, we are going back to Kathmandu.”

At 10 minutes to 5pm, the 6E 31 took off again. But at 6.15, it was the pilot again. “We are 100 miles short of Kathmandu. The weather is bad and it won't be advisable to penetrate it. Don't worry, we have two hours of fuel.”

It would take another two hours for the plane to touch down, which it did at 8pm. The one and half hour Delhi-Kathmandu flight had taken close to 9 hours. In the distance from Tribhuvan International Airport was the city of Kathmandu, desolate, bruised and dark.