All possible scenarios behind the crash of Ajit Pawar's jet

How weather, human judgement and a VFR-only airfield converged in the final seconds before Ajit Pawar's jet crashed.

Even as the dust began to settle in Baramati on Thursday morning, questions mounted after the Learjet 45 XR crash killed Maharashtra’s Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar and four others. Investigators are yet to issue an official account, even as competing theories crowd the headlines.

Drawing on publicly available data and expert analysis, India Today’s OSINT team evaluated multiple scenarios that could explain the aircraft’s final moments, assessing the relative strength of each theory.

Taken together, the trail from the aborted first landing to the tilted trajectory recorded on CCTV helps piece together the pilot’s final decisions, showing how several risk factors may have aligned to a fatal outcome.

The crew reported two times that the runway was not in sight during the approach, indicating degraded visual conditions close to the ground. A go-around on the first attempt suggests that the pilots did not have the required visual contact with the runway to continue a safe landing initially.

Indian Air Force Wing Commander Dinesh K Nair(Retired) put it succinctly: “If the pilot attempted landing despite being below visual minima, that becomes a question of judgement, not weather. Low visibility may be a contributing factor, but the primary factor there would be human error.”

The Ministry of Civil Aviation confirmed the visibility at around 3,000 meters in a statement released on Wednesday evening. However, patchy fog, ground haze, or localised mist near the runway can obscure the runway during final approach.