Aeroplane Boy Still Haunted By Flight He Captured 'AI-171 Crash'

A year ago, 18-year-old Aryan Asari was an anonymous schoolboy from a remote village in Gujarat's Aravalli district who had never seen an aircraft from such close quarters. 

Today, the teenager is known as the "Aeroplane Boy" across his village and neighbouring areas, thanks to a mobile phone video that accidentally captured the final moments of the ill-fated Air India flight that crashed in Ahmedabad on June 12 last year, killing 260 persons.

But fame came at a cost. Aryan now says he has not filmed a single aircraft since that day and is still not ready to board one himself. "I went to Ahmedabad for the first time and saw a plane from such a close



distance. 

I took out my mobile phone and started recording because I wanted to show it to my friends back in the village," Aryan recalled during an interaction with media ahead of the first anniversary of the tragedy.

Standing on the terrace of his father's rented accommodation in Ahmedabad's Meghaninagar, close to the airport, Aryan was fascinated by the sight of a low-flying aircraft. 

What began as a casual video soon turned into one of the most widely circulated recordings of the disaster. "Suddenly, the plane started coming down and then crashed into a huge fireball. I was terrified. I had never imagined something like that could happen in front of my eyes," he said.