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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Local aviator pays tribute to pilot who died in Air India crash

by

Otto Carrington
18 days ago
20250627

As the avi­a­tion world mourns the lives lost in the trag­ic Air In­dia crash on June 12, one Trinida­di­an avi­a­tor is re­mem­ber­ing the pi­lot at the con­trols not just as a col­league, but as a dear friend and kin­dred spir­it in the sky.

Kevin De­onar­ine, a sea­soned com­mer­cial air­plane and he­li­copter pi­lot and cur­rent Lead Civ­il Avi­a­tion Safe­ty In­spec­tor at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (TTCAA), spoke ex­clu­sive­ly to Guardian Me­dia about his long-stand­ing friend­ship with the late Clive Kun­der, who trag­i­cal­ly lost his life in the re­cent in­ci­dent.

“I first met Clive dur­ing our ear­ly days at flight school,” De­onar­ine re­called.

“I was work­ing to­ward my mul­ti-en­gine com­mer­cial rat­ing and Clive had just start­ed chas­ing his pas­sion for avi­a­tion. We were young, dri­ven, and ab­solute­ly pas­sion­ate about fly­ing.”

De­onar­ine de­scribed Kun­der as “one of those rare souls who lift­ed every­one around him,” not­ing his calm de­meanour and joy­ful na­ture even un­der the in­tense pres­sure of train­ing.

The two trained to­geth­er at Vero Beach, Flori­da, af­fec­tion­ate­ly dubbed Ze­ro Beach, where they built a ca­ma­raderie that went be­yond text­books and cock­pits.

“There’s a video I took of him the day he joined the acad­e­my,” De­onar­ine said with a soft smile.

“He said, ‘My name is Clive and I’m a fu­ture pi­lot.’ The day he got his wings, I re­post­ed that video and told him, ‘It’s not the fu­ture any­more you made it!’

“He laughed and thanked me. That was Clive grate­ful, hum­ble, and al­ways full of life.”

He al­so shared a light-heart­ed mem­o­ry of play­ing a prank on Kun­der dur­ing their ear­ly days in train­ing.

“There’s a tra­di­tion where, af­ter your first so­lo flight, you’re thrown in­to a pool or soaked in wa­ter. I con­vinced Clive that the tra­di­tion was to be thrown in­to the lake,” he said, chuck­ling.

“To my sur­prise, Clive didn’t re­sist he ac­tu­al­ly walked in­to the lake him­self. He knew it was a joke, but he went along with it any­way. That’s the kind of guy he was. Free-spir­it­ed, a true team play­er.”

But when it came to work, De­onar­ine not­ed, Kun­der nev­er missed a beat.

“Whether it was a writ­ten ex­am or a pre-flight brief­ing, Clive showed up pre­pared, rest­ed, and ra­zor sharp. He didn’t just build flight hours; he built trust and pro­fes­sion­al­ism.”

Kun­der was serv­ing as the first of­fi­cer on Air In­dia Flight AI 171, a Boe­ing 787 Dream­lin­er that crashed just mo­ments af­ter take­off from Ahmed­abad’s Sar­dar Val­lab­hb­hai Pa­tel In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on June 12.

The air­craft, car­ry­ing 230 pas­sen­gers and 12 crew, is­sued a dis­tress call 36 sec­onds af­ter take­off, cit­ing thrust is­sues. The land­ing gear re­mained ex­tend­ed dur­ing the de­scent, and with­in mo­ments, the plane crashed in­to a med­ical col­lege hos­tel in In­dia’s Meghani Na­gar dis­trict, ig­nit­ing a dev­as­tat­ing fire.

In to­tal, over 260 lives were lost, in­clud­ing near­ly every­one on board and more than a dozen res­i­dents on the ground. On­ly one pas­sen­ger sur­vived.

“Learn­ing Clive was on that flight broke some­thing in­side of me,” said De­onar­ine.

“To think of all the dreams we talked about, all the things he still had to ac­com­plish it’s heart­break­ing.”

In­dia’s avi­a­tion reg­u­la­tors have launched a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Af­ter their grad­u­a­tion, De­onar­ine and Kun­der took dif­fer­ent routes in their avi­a­tion ca­reers.

De­onar­ine pur­sued fur­ther qual­i­fi­ca­tions, be­com­ing a com­mer­cial he­li­copter pi­lot, a cer­ti­fied drone op­er­a­tor, and a spe­cial­ist in air­craft ac­ci­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

To­day, he leads over­sight of aero­dromes and per­son­nel li­cens­ing at the TTCAA.

De­spite their ge­o­graph­i­cal dis­tance and dif­fer­ing roles, he said the bond nev­er fad­ed.

“I al­ways be­lieved he was des­tined for a mean­ing­ful ca­reer not just be­cause of his skills, but be­cause of his char­ac­ter,” De­onar­ine said.

“Clive wasn’t just fly­ing planes he was fly­ing with pur­pose. He was a re­mark­able avi­a­tor, a ded­i­cat­ed friend, and a tru­ly good hu­man be­ing. We’ve lost a great pi­lot—but even more, we’ve lost a great soul.”


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