‘An amazing person’: The untold story of two pilots who lost their lives in Air India crash

Thursday 12th June 2025 should have been a normal day at work for Capt. Sumeet Sabharwal and Clive Kunder. But, the two Air India pilots never made it home. Their flight that day, that should have lasted just under 10 hours, lasted less than a minute.

Together, the two pilots had over 10,000 hours of flying experience. One had a full and accomplished career, and the other should have had all of that ahead of him.

Flight AI171 took off from Ahmedabad City bound for London at around 1:39pm local time. Less than a minute later, it began rapidly losing altitude and crashed into the campus of a nearby medical college. It left at least 270 people dead.

Capt. Sumeet Sabharwal, 55, and co-pilot Clive Kunder, 32, sent out a mayday just before impact. “Thrust not achieved… falling… Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” Captain Sabharwal said, just moments before impact. Air Traffic Control didn’t have time to respond before it was too late.

Right now, the “most probable” cause of what happened is being looked into as a dual engine failure. But, investigations continue and nothing is confirmed. One thing is for sure though: Investigators agree the two pilots in charge were heroic in trying desperately to save the lives of everyone on board.

There was just one survivor of the crash. 40-year-old Vishwash Kumar Ramesh lived, and said: “The pilot was trying to give it a bit of a push to push it forward, but it was struggling. It went straight into a building.”

via Ashish Vaishnav/SOPA Images/Shutterstock

Captain Sabharwal was planning to retire, so he was able to care full-time for his elderly father

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Both of the captains were from Mumbai, and travel was in their blood. Captain Sabharwal’s father had worked as an officer in the civil aviation authority of India, and Mr Kunder’s mother worked as a flight attendant, also for Air India, as per New York Times. Captain Sabharwal was also the primary caregiver for his father, who is in his 80s. His mother passed away three years ago.

Family members have described Captain Sabharwal as “soft spoken” and “reserved” and he would often be seen out on walks with his elderly father. Neighbours who spoke to New York Times regarding Captain Sabharwal’s father have said he is grieving, and when they’ve offered him tea and help, he refused “out of sadness”.

It’s been reported Captain Sabharwal was soon planning on retiring himself, so he could focus his time on looking after his father. “An hour before the Air India flight took off, he spoke to his father and told him that he would call again after landing in London,” a neighbour said. “That call never came.”

via Basit Zargar/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

Clive Kunder had been passionate about flying since school

As for co-pilot Clive Kunder, he had joined Air India much more recently, after studying aircraft maintenance engineering. Kunder had joined Air India in 2017.

He was passionate about flying since childhood, as he grew up alongside his mother who had worked as cabin crew for 33 years. His family, who had been visiting Australia when the crash happened, have since travelled to Ahmedabad to identify him.

Kunder has been described as a “very humble person”. A relative added: “He was a down to earth person and an amazing person to be around. His death has shocked family members who cherished their relationship with him.”

One of his former professors recalled: “Clive was very brilliant student, very disciplined, very punctual, intelligent. His work was very neat, clean, very systematic.” They added his “disciplined nature made him a successful pilot”.

Investigations into what happened continue.

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