A female Nigerian pilot offers sobering insight into the military jet crash in Bangladesh that has killed over 30 and left 171, mostly children with severe burns.
The Bangladeshi Air Force training jet crashed into Milestone School and College in the Diabari area of Dhaka on Monday, killing over 30 people, most of them children and injuring more than 170 others, according to the Bangladesh Armed Forces and Health Ministry.
The aircraft, an F-7 fighter jet, had taken off from BAF Base AK Khandaker in Dhaka for a routine training flight just after 1:00 p.m. local time. Within 18 minutes, it developed a mechanical fault and crashed into a two-storey school building at around 1:18 p.m., as confirmed by a statement from the armed forces.
Among those killed was Flight Lieutenant Md. Taukir Islam, the pilot of the ill-fated jet. Military officials say he attempted to steer the aircraft away from densely populated residential areas before impact.
In light of the incident, The News Chronicle spoke exclusively with a Lagos-based female pilot, who offered professional insight and human perspective on the crash. When asked whether the accident could have been prevented, she responded:
“Could the crash have been averted? I can’t answer that because I don’t know what the mechanical failure was. Usually, as pilots, we do trainings every six months on emergencies—so if this happens, what do you do? If that happens, what do you do? By the grace of God, we are not expected to have to do it in real life but in case of incasities, that’s why we do these trainings every six months.”
“Usually with mechanical failures, though, depending on the severity of the failure, something can be done. So for it to have had a mechanical failure and still crash, there was probably nothing that could have been done at that time. It’s also a training flight, so you want to think about the competency of the pilot as well. Coz experience helps a lot. There are some things the book may not be able to tell you, but experience will be able to help you get through; that’s not just with aviation, with life.”
“So maybe another thing that could have averted the crash was competency. But even at that, there’s a level of experience that that failure or whatever happened could not help anyone out of. After all, there have been multiple air crash investigations where you see people quoting thousands of flight hours for captains and flight officers, yet the plane still went down. So it depends on what was the mechanical issue or mechanical failure.”
A BBC map shows that Milestone School and College is located approximately 6 to 7 kilometers from BAF Base AK Khandaker. The school is situated in Diabari, a residential neighborhood in Uttara, north of the capital.
Regarding concerns about the location of the military base near residential areas, the pilot told the TNC Correspondent:
“As regarding whether the military base was located too close to the residential areas, I don’t know. Let me use this as an example—literally the Murtala Mohammed airport in Lagos is right there, there are houses, commercial buildings all around it. We’re not supposed to fly over congested areas, cities, towns… except in an emergency. You can make a safe landing preferably away from the congested area.”
“The example I was trying to make with Lagos is that it’s not feasible to not have a location close to the airport, especially now that development is happening a lot. After all, there are ways to improve safety; because you’re always flying over somewhere except you’re flying over the high sea. It’s just that you’re flying at an altitude. For example, the Air India crash literally took off and when it came down, it came down on a building.”
“But, it’s just the location [the military base], it shouldn’t have been that close. But I think with development, it’s almost inevitable to see airports and airspaces located in development areas where people live. We just hope that as much as possible, with the emergency you have, hopefully, you can get the plane as far away from as congested an area as possible. Now maybe to him [the pilot], that was the least congested area and maybe that’s why he ended up there as opposed to somewhere else. I’m not sure what’s around that region to be like oh it could have been worse if it was here as opposed to there. Sad, nevertheless.”
Witness Account
Farhan Hasan, a Year 10 student, had just finished an exam when the crash happened.
“The burning plane was hitting the building right in front of my eyes,” Farhan told BBC Bangla, visibly shaken. “My best friend, the one I was in the exam hall with, died right in front of my eyes.”
Farhan described a chaotic scene with students and parents leaving the school as the aircraft descended.
“Many parents were inside the compound waiting for their children. The plane took the parents along with it,” he added during the interview, accompanied by his father and uncle.
According to Dr. Md. Sayedur Rahman, special assistant to the health ministry, 25 of the deceased were schoolchildren between the ages of 9 and 14. The total number of injured stood at 171, including students, staff, and parents.
Over 50 burn victims were taken to the National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery, while others were admitted to six additional hospitals across Dhaka.
Shah Alam, the uncle of Year 8 student Tanvir Ahmed, who died in the crash, spoke to reporters at the hospital.
“My beloved nephew is in the morgue right now,” he said, holding his younger brother, Tanvir’s father who was too distraught to speak.
A young girl receiving treatment told Channel 24, “When we came out, we saw many students who had been charred.”
Family members at the hospitals described severely burned victims and said some were unrecognizable. One woman, searching for her son, said he called her right after the crash but had not been reachable since.
Government and Military Response
Bangladesh’s interim Prime Minister, Muhammad Yunus, declared Tuesday, July 22, a national day of mourning. Flags were flown at half-mast, and special prayers were held.
“This is a moment of deep sorrow for the nation,” Yunus wrote in a statement posted on X (formerly Twitter). “I wish the injured a speedy recovery and instruct all authorities, including the hospitals concerned, to deal with the situation with utmost importance.”
The Bangladesh Armed Forces confirmed the aircraft had developed a mechanical fault and stated that the pilot attempted to minimize damage by avoiding densely populated areas.
Following the accident, dozens of ambulances and volunteers rushed to the site, pulling out bodies and transporting the injured.
Crowds gathered around the school as smoke filled the sky. Citizens responded by donating blood at hospitals across the city. Political figures from both the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Jamaat-e-Islami visited victims in the hospitals.
Messages of condolence have also come from regional leaders, including the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan and an investigation committee was formed to determine the cause of the crash.
However, on Tuesday, July 22, hundreds of students gathered outside the school to protest the military jet crash. At the protest site, students accused authorities of withholding the true number of casualties, chanting slogans like “fake, fake.”
Witnesses described the school as a “death trap,” while some parents and teachers demanded accountability.
The government has denied hiding casualty figures and said identities were still being confirmed.
In an emotional conclusion, the Nigerian pilot accented her belief in the pilot’s efforts:
“Did he try his best? I want to say—I’m a pilot, I will say yes. As long as he’s not suicidal, I don’t think any pilot wants to die or wants to see an aircraft go down on his watch.”
“There is a level of over-compensation that can happen when an emergency does occur. If you’re driving a car and next thing you hear a noise, there’s a tendency to fixate on that noise and forget that you’re driving the car. And in an attempt to solve or get to the bottom of what’s making that noise, your attention is now divided; you’re now over-compensating for the noise as opposed to focusing on the actual task at hand—which is flying the aircraft or rather driving the car.”
“I think it’s the same thing here. Did he do his best? I want to believe so. It’s just, I guess in this case, his best was not good enough, which is sad to think of. But from a pilot’s perspective, I want to believe he did do his best. As long as he’s not suicidal, I believe he did do his best.”
