Kerala: Family of student pilot killed in Canada seeks urgent repatriation of body

KOCHI: The family of Sreehari Sukesh, a student pilot killed in a mid-air collision in Canada’s Manitoba province, on Thursday urged the central and state governments to help repatriate his body as quickly as possible. Sreehari was killed when his single-engine plane collided mid-air with another similar aircraft piloted by a Canadian youth, who also died in the accident on Tuesday.

Speaking to reporters in Tripunithura, near here, where his family resides, Sreehari's relative said he had been in Canada for the past one and a half years. He said Sreehari had gone to Canada after completing his 12th standard.

"He had secured a private pilot licence and was undergoing training to obtain a commercial licence. For that, he needed to complete 180 more flying hours, and he was almost at the end of that requirement when the tragedy occurred," the relative said. He appealed to government authorities to take urgent steps to repatriate the body.

"We are trying through various channels --the Chief Minister's Office, the offices of Union Ministers from Kerala, Suresh Gopi and George Kurian, and the Ministry of External Affairs," he told reporters.

Technical reasons are not yet known

The family came to know about the incident on Wednesday through relatives of students studying with Sreehari, but an official confirmation from his flying school instructor was received only at 5.30 pm. He said the technical reasons that led to the accident are not yet known, but co-students told the family that it was not a mishap due to negligence. Instead, something went wrong during a manoeuvre that was part of the training.

The Consulate General of India on Wednesday said it was "in contact with the bereaved family, the pilot training school and local police to provide all necessary assistance." "The bodies of the two student pilots were recovered in the wreckage of their single-engine planes after both crashed mid-air on Tuesday morning near Steinbach, roughly 50 kilometres southeast of Winnipeg," a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) news report said.

The students collided when approaching a landing strip while practising takeoffs and landings, the CBC report said, quoting Adam Penner, president of Harv's Air, the flying school where both pilots had been training. The Transportation Safety Board, the agency responsible for investigating aviation incidents in Canada, said it is gathering information and assessing the fatal crash. Sreehari Sukesh's age was not mentioned.