Air India plane crash: Dream of auto driver's daughter to pursue MTech in London ends in tragedy

Days after the horrific Air India flight AI-717 crash, emotional stories of the passengers onboard are coming to the limelight. One such story is of young woman from Gujarat's Himatnagar – Payal Khatik.

Payal, daughter of a loading rickshaw boarded an aeroplane to travel out of the country for the first time on Thursday, reported NDTV. She was amongst the 230 passengers on the Air India Ahmedabad-Gatwick flight which crashed after just taking off from Ahmedabad airport.

Payal was the first member of the family to board a flight and she was travelling to the United Kingdom, to pursue a Master's degree in engineering and technology.

At around 10 am, her family bid a fond adieu to their beloved daughter and went home. However, within hours she was on the list of 241 passengers and crew who lost their lives in the plane crash.

The Air India flight AI-171, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, crashed and inked its name in the worst aviation disaster in 15 years. It hit a medical college building in the city, killing 274 people in total.

Payal's death was confirmed by DNA analysis a day after the plane crash, and authorities are investigating why this happened.

What family says?

Speaking to ANI, her father, Suresh Khatik said, “After completing her college, she stayed with us... she wanted to study further in London. So we took out loans to support her education there...”

Suresh stated that he took loans hoping Payal's future job would help pay back and support the family. But now, they have no way to pay back the loans.

"She was the first member of our family to travel abroad... she was going to London. She completed her BTech from Udaipur and was going for MTech. But this tragic incident happened. Our family is deeply saddened..." her cousin, Bharat Chauhan, told another news agency IANS.

As per the details, Payel hailed from Rajasthan's Udaipur, who studied from Class I to Class X at the Adarsh School in Himatnagar. She completed her Class XI and XII from the Himat High School, added NDTV.

"She was educated. She has brothers and sisters... and her father is a driver. But the financial condition of her family was not good," Payal's family friend Sushila Pathak said, whose son she had been tutoring for the past six years.

Another relative said, "The financial condition of the family is not good. Payal used to take care of the family by giving tuition to the students..."

AI717 crash:

Earlier on Thursday afternoon, Air India flight AI717 – from Ahmedabad to London's Gatwick – crashed soon after the take off. There were 230 passengers and 10 crew members onboard. However, only one survived the crash.

Meanwhile, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, is carrying out the checks on the nation’s 787s, Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu said in a press briefing on Saturday in New Delhi.

The minister added that the government had set up a special multi-department team to investigate all the non-technical aspects around the crash and has been given three months to report. India’s accident investigation bureau is in charge of probing the technical aspects behind the plane crash.

To determine what caused the aircraft to fail in the deadliest aviation accident in more than a decade, the investigators have been surveying the wreckage of Air India flight AI171.

Investigative teams from the UK and US arrived Friday in Ahmedabad to assist with the crash probe.

With agency inputs.