Childhood passion to getting wings — RIP, Monty

New Delhi

Among those who died in the AN-32 crash in Arunachal Pradesh was Flight Lieutenant Sunit Mohanty, who grew up listening to the roar of plane engines and collecting data on planes.

Right from his days in primary school, he wanted to be a pilot, like his father Group Capt GC Mohanty (retd), a former IL-76 transport pilot who now flies commercially.

Ironically, the young pilot’s body was cremated at Brar Square in Delhi Cantonment today, exactly five years from the day he was commissioned into the Indian Air Force on June 21, 2014. Vice Chief of the IAF Air Marshal RK Bhaduria was present at the cremation.

Flt Lt Mohanty was 28 years of age and was the co-pilot of the ill-fated AN-32 that crashed during a sortie from Jorhat in Assam to Mechuka on June 3. He was unmarried. “He was in primary school in Agra and later in St Xavier’s, Chandigarh — where he studied from Classes 7 to 9 — when he started showing interest in planes,” recalls Group Capt Mohanty (retd).

He would collect data on planes and pose queries on them, says the father, reminiscing how his son had topped the Combined Defence Service (CDS) entrance exam, which he took after completing BTech from the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Jamshedpur.

“He kept preparing for the exam even while studying for his BTech. He was eager to fly and opted for it,” recollects the father. Group Capt Mohanty (retd) was posted in Chandigarh, a major supply base for Ladakh, where an IL-76 squadron was based. Agra is also a major base for IL-76. Growing up on these bases, Flt Lt Mohanty, who went by call sign ‘Monty’ — nickname given to all IAF pilots to shorten the radio commands — had a passion for flying. He made it to fighter flying before being shifted to transport planes.