Indian Air Ambulance VT-HYA Lands in Dhaka After Its Door Opens in Flight; Patient Dies in Hospital

An Indian air ambulance, the Beechcraft King Air C90A registered VT-HYA, made an emergency landing at Dhaka on Sunday, October 18, 2026, after its main door was damaged and partly opened as it climbed past 12,000 feet. The patient it was carrying from Agartala to Kolkata, 56-year-old Anjana Bhowmik, was declared dead at a Dhaka hospital that afternoon.

None of the reports give a cause of death, and officials have not said whether it was connected to the problem on board.

What the Bangladesh authorities said

The Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (CAAB) said in a press release that the twin turboprop developed a cabin pressurization problem while climbing past 12,000 feet, and that this damaged the main door and left it partially open. The pilot declared an emergency and asked to land at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport.

The aircraft touched down at about 1:40 pm local time, according to the airport’s statement. Fire and rescue vehicles, ambulances and medical staff had been placed on standby before it arrived.

Seven people were on board, all Indian nationals: two pilots, the patient, a doctor, a paramedic and two people accompanying her. The airport said everyone apart from the patient was safe after the landing.

Bhowmik was taken to Kurmitola Multicare Specialised Hospital, where she died at 4:40 pm, airport police official Kamrul Hasan Talukder said, according to The Daily Star. She was being flown to Kolkata for treatment; the reports do not say for what.

Airport spokesperson Md Riaz Uddin described the fault more generally, as a mechanical problem that caused the door to open. Because the flight was domestic within India, the crew and passengers had no passports or visas, so CAAB said it assisted them on humanitarian grounds while the Indian High Commission arranged diplomatic clearance.

The aircraft and its operator

Passenger manifest details published by Manab Zamin and The Daily Star name the operator as India’s SKB Infracon Private Limited. bdnews24 reported that the airplane was built in 1994, was once owned by the Haryana state government and later passed to Jhankar Aviation.

Most reports give the registration as VT-HYA, and the Plane Finder tracking database holds a Beechcraft King Air under that mark. One outlet printed VT-HOYA, which does not fit India’s VT- plus three letters format.

Bangladeshi officials and outlets describe the aircraft as a C90A, while Plane Finder lists VT-HYA as a C90B. Both are versions of the same pressurized King Air 90 airframe, the line that later produced the King Air C90GTi.

Why a King Air door matters at 12,000 feet

A King Air’s cabin is pressurized, so in the climb the air inside pushes outward on every panel, the main door included. That door is held by four locking bolts, two on each edge, plus hooks at the top, and switches on the bolts and hooks feed a cabin door warning light in the cockpit, as maintenance writer Dean Benedict explained in King Air Magazine.

He also wrote that every King Air from the A90 to the 350 uses essentially the same door, strengthened over the years for higher pressurization loads.

On October 18, 1992, 34 years to the day before the Dhaka diversion, the cabin door of a Beech 200 King Air, VH-IBF, separated in flight about 73 miles (117 km) east of Sydney. The investigation report said a failure inside the locking mechanism may have let the upper pins and hooks release, but the cause was never determined, and it asked that all King Air series operators be told.

CAAB’s account has the pressurization fault damaging the door, yet a door that unlatches or loses its seal would itself cause a pressurization problem. Which came first on VT-HYA is a question for investigators.

A short hop that crosses a border

Agartala, the capital of Tripura, sits in a state bordered by Bangladesh to the north, south and west, so a direct line to Kolkata, about 197 miles (317 km) away, runs across Bangladesh. Dhaka’s main airport is only about 53 miles (86 km) from Agartala, which made it the obvious place to put down once the door gave way.

That geography also decides who investigates. Under ICAO Annex 13, the state where an occurrence happens normally leads the investigation, here Bangladesh, while the state of registry and of the operator (India) and the state of design (the United States, for a Beechcraft) can take part.

The patient’s death matters to how the event is classed. Under the ICAO-based definition, which EU law repeats in Regulation 996/2010, a death on board makes an accident only when the injury results from being in the aircraft, not from natural causes.

Whether the flight is recorded as an accident or a serious incident may therefore turn partly on a medical finding. At the time of writing on October 19, AeroCorner found no public announcement of an investigation from CAAB or India’s aviation authorities.

Earlier this month AeroCorner covered another air ambulance flight that ended badly, when air ambulance C-GRJP went missing off Nantucket.