“I wld love to grow old wid u....”.
In a Facebook post on Valentine’s Day in 2013, Sahil Gandhi had wished to spend the rest of his life with his wife. Soon after, the couple had welcomed their baby son, Riaan, into the world.
Sahil and his wife would exchange affectionate posts on Facebook.
But the wishes remained incomplete as the 37-year-old Wing Commander succumbed to his injuries when two aircraft of IAF's aerobatic team Surya Kiran crashed near the Yelahanka airbase in Bengaluru on Tuesday, 19 February, a day before the opening of the Aero India show.
The mishap, where two other pilots were injured, occurred during a sortie as part of the rehersal for the five-day Asia's premier Air show.
Gandhi’s Facebook profile says he belonged from Haryana’s Hisar and was currently living in Karnataka’s Bidar. He is an alumnus of the National Defence Academy.
‘Hawk Mk-132 Susceptible to Failure’: Sahil Gandhi Had Warned in 2017
Gandhi, reportedly commissioned on 19 June 2004, was reportedly a pilot with a Sukhoi-30 background.
On the Hawk Mk-132 aircraft, which is used by the Suryakiran aerobatics demonstration team, then Squadron Leader Gandhi had told Deccan Herald in 2017:
“The aircraft is electronically intrinsic in nature. This not only makes maintaining it a challenge but also more susceptible to failure.”Sahil Gandhi to Deccan Herald
Gandhi had also called the aircraft faster than the one used earlier by the aerobatic team and also drew attention to how the aircraft were maintained.
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