Om Prakash Arora

Biography

Flight Lieutenant Om Prakash Arora was commissioned as a Pilot Officer in the Indian Air Force on 05 December 1970. He joined the technical branch of the IAF and trained as an Aeronautical Engineer in the Electronics stream as part of the 47 DEO course. Over the following years he served at various Air Force bases and gained wide experience across the many technical activities associated with IAF assets. He subsequently qualified as a flight signaler and became part of the air crew. By November 1977, Flt Lt Arora was serving with the Air Headquarters Communication Squadron, based at Air Force Station Palam, whose primary role was to convey the nation's VVIPs and visiting foreign dignitaries. On 04 November 1977, Prime Minister Shri Morarji Desai was scheduled to fly from Delhi to Jorhat, Assam, on an official tour of the North Eastern States. A Russian-made TU-124 twin-engine VIP aircraft named Pushpak was tasked for the journey, and Flt Lt Arora was selected to undertake the operation as its Flight Signaler. The aircraft took off from Palam at 5 pm and, after refuelling at Bagdogra, proceeded to Jorhat, which lay under darkness and cloud cover with no ground-based instrument landing support. After an aborted first approach, the landing gear grazed a treetop on the second attempt, damaging the nose landing gear. Judging it too dangerous to land on the runway, the crew executed a crash landing in a soft paddy field, deliberately accepting maximum impact on the cockpit to protect the passenger cabin. The Prime Minister and all other passengers survived, but the crew perished. Flt Lt Om Prakash Arora laid down his life in the line of duty, among the air warriors whose sacrifice averted what could have been the worst VVIP air disaster in Indian history.