The Pilot Who Died In The Vaishno Devi Crash, Sumita Vijayan, Was A Hero To Many

Sumita Vijayan, the pilot who died in the Vaishno Devi chopper crash that killed seven on Monday, was a hero to many in Uttarakhand, with friends and colleagues remembering how she was the first one to drop teams from the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering in Kedarnath after the floods of 2013 for some much-needed restoration work. Colonel Ajay Kothiyal, principal of NIM, said, "It was Sumita who dropped our team in the aftermath of the flash floods. It was under the most challenging of circumstances. She was hovering in the sky without any helipad in the hostile weather and terrain. Only an experienced pilot can accomplish this feat. In army, we call this attitude going 'beyond the call of duty'. It was because of her that NIM teams could recce the valley."

ANI

Vijayan, 45, was among the first women pilots of the Indian Air Force and was one of the most experienced with over 8,000 hours of flying time. She was a 1997-batch IAF officer on Short Service Commission, retiring in 2005. Thereafter she joined the Himalayan Heli Services Private Limited (HSPL) as chief pilot and is widely credited for the expansion of the company. She was single and and lived alone in Dwarka, New Delhi. She is survived by her two siblings and mother who lives in Siliguri, West Bengal. Her father died two years ago. Anupam Kathuria, a pilot with Uttarakhand-based Dev Bhumi Aviation company and a course-mate of Vijayan, said, "Sumita enjoyed the reputation of being highly professional, hard working, a go-getter and no-nonsense person who was equally charming and strong. She led from the front as the chief pilot in HSPL with a small feet and expanded it with more pilots and helicopters under her leadership."

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As kin and acquaintances paid tributes on social media, Capt Puneet Bakshi, who also piloted during the Kedarnath disaster, remembered her fondly and said, "Sumita commanded a group of 10 or more pilots, much senior to her. She had an iron-clad image. There are few women pilots in the so-called typical man's world of civil aviation. Moreover, helicopter flying is a rarity. It is considered to be the one of the most difficult jobs, where you are supposed to fly in the most hostile of terrains, high altitude areas without safety nets, helipads, air traffic control system, and during odd hours. It's far from the basic comforts that flying between cities brings, with hotel stays and other luxuries. She lived in tents, ate Maggi and did all that excellently for 10 years. The entire pilot fraternity is in deep shock." Bakshi said flying in such altitudes is always dangerous as the probability of crash is "forever there", what with the possibility of "machine going bad, malfunction in the air, bird hits, internal fire". He added, "The way the machine (chopper) was reduced to smithereens in the Vaishno Devi accident, it seems it crashed with great velocity."