Ahmedabad AI-171 Plane Crash Reopens Wounds Of Faridabad’s 2011 Air Ambulance Fall
Memories of Faridabad plane crash 14 years ago came alive for its residents when an air ambulance fell on Haryana colony a fateful May night.
Published : June 13, 2025 at 3:48 PM IST
Faridabad: As the country mourns the horrifying crash of an Air India flight in Ahmedabad, which claimed more than 300 lives on Thursday, Faridabad residents recall their nightmare from 14 years ago, one that broke their peace at midnight and took away sleep for days.
On May 25, 2011, a routine night turned chaotic as a small air ambulance carrying a critically ill patient from Patna to Delhi lost control midway due to a fierce storm and crashed into a densely populated area named Parvatiya Colony. Within seconds the house it fell on was up in flames. By the time the flames were doused, 10 people, seven who were on board, and three women sleeping on the roof, blissfully ignorant of what lay in store for them, were dead.
The tragedy, over a period of time has faded into oblivion, but not the memory of it.
“It seemed catastrophic at the beginning because we were in deep slumber and within seconds, everything was on fire. What followed were screams, smoke, and bodies. It was a horrifying experience,” recalls Deepak Sehrawat, one of the only two survivors from the house the plane fell on. His voice still shakes and becomes incoherent when he remembers that night.
At about 9 pm that night, a powerful storm swept across parts of Delhi-NCR. The air ambulance took off from Patna with 20-year-old Rahul, a jaundice patient and accompanying him were his brother Ratnesh, two doctors, Dr. Rajiv Jain and Dr. Arshad, two nurses, and the pilot. The plane was to make a landing at a Delhi hospital by 10 pm.
But it crashed in Faridabad.
With heavy wind, turbulence made the aircraft lose balance and the pilot, control. He must have tried to stabilise it, as it circled over Faridabad. Then, around 10.30 pm, residents of Parvatiya Colony heard a deafening noise and then there was a ball of fire. The aircraft had fallen directly on a two-storey house where three women were sleeping on the roof. Within minutes, 10 lives were lost.
Neither could the patient reach Delhi for treatment nor did the people trying to save him, survive.
On Thursday, when the news of Ahmedabad Plane Crash broke, it pained Faridabad residents in a big way. Particularly for the families who lived those nightmarish moments, it has stirred them once again after years.
“When we saw the news, it was like déjà vu. Once can never get over something like a plane crash that falls on your house. I can still get the smell of burning fuel, the cries of people and those are painful to be relived,” Deepak says.
His nephew, Yash, who was just a child then, does not even want to speak about it as for him, it was the shock of his life.
Parvatiya Colony remembers the crash, people, fire and pain. And most residents realised it like no one else, what it must have been like when a fully loaded Dreamliner turns into a fire ball.
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