Long Island plane crash: Mom Roma Gupta dies; daughter Reeva Gupta, pilot Fayzul Chowdhury in critical condition

The wreckage from Sunday's fatal small-plane crash just south of Republic Airport was removed Tuesday and the pilot and a surviving passenger remained hospitalized in critical condition, according to federal and local officials.

Bronx resident Fayzul Chowdhury, 23, the pilot of the doomed single-engine aircraft, and Reeva Gupta, 33, of St. Davids, Pennsylvania, both suffered severe burns in the crash and continued receiving treatment Tuesday at Stony Brook University Hospital. The hospital declined to provide additional details about their injuries.

The Piper PA-28 was returning to Republic before it went down shortly before 3 p.m. in the woods near a residential North Lindenhurst neighborhood about 2½ miles southeast of the airport.

Flames engulfed the aircraft and thick, black smoke billowed to the sky.  A second passenger, Gupta's mother, Roma Gupta, 63, of Whitehouse Township, New Jersey, was pronounced dead at scene, officials said after the crash.

A spokeswoman for the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the crash, said it removed the wreckage Tuesday and has completed its initial examination. The plane will be brought to an off-site facility for further investigation. 

The plane's engine, assuming it's still intact, will likely be the focus of investigators, along with other factors that could have contributed to the crash, said David Tochen, a former general counsel for the NTSB.

"They'll want to look at the pilot's records to see if there's anything in his background that may have contributed to the accident," said Tochen, now an attorney in Washington, D.C., specializing in aviation law.

"They'll presumably do blood alcohol testing for the pilot as well," he said.

Investigators will likely review surveillance video of the crash, interview the survivors and any witnesses, according to Tochen.

The NTSB could issue a preliminary report in as early as two weeks, he said, but a final "probable cause determination" may take up to a year.

The Guptas had booked the flight through Groupon with the Danny Waizman Flight School at Republic Airport, where Chowdhury had worked for nearly a year. The flight was a "demonstration" to determine if the mother and daughter wanted to take an actual flying lesson, said Oleh N. Dekajlo of East Meadow, an attorney for the flight school.

The plane had made two trips earlier Sunday, including a 28-minute flight that landed 20 minutes before the Piper took off for the final time, according to FlightAware.com.

Efforts to reach friends, relatives and colleagues of the Guptas and Chowdhury were not successful on Tuesday.

Reeva Gupta is a neurosurgery physician assistant at Mount Sinai West Hospital in Manhattan, records show. A spokeswoman for Gupta's unit said the family has not authorized anyone from the hospital to speak with the media.

Colleagues at Mount Sinai created a fundraising page to help offset the family's expenses. As of Tuesday evening, the GoFundMe had more than $130,000 in donations.

"We are raising funds to help support Reeva and her family during this unprecedented trying time, through transportation, lodging, food assistance and medical expenses," the page states. "She faces a long, painful recovery, and her family, who needs to be at her bedside, lives far from eastern Long Island."

Federal Aviation Administration records show Chowdhury obtained his commercial pilot's license on May 18, 2022, permitting him to fly single and multi-engine airplanes. He obtained a flight instructor certificate on Sept. 21, 2022, for single-engine planes, FAA records show.

The Piper took off at 2:18 p.m. Sunday and made a frantic "mayday" distress call to the Republic Airport control tower shortly before 3 p.m., indicating there was a fire on board the aircraft, according to the cockpit recording posted by LiveATC.net, which publishes air traffic control broadcasts.

Surveillance camera video shot by a business on Wellwood Avenue near the crash site shows the plane crashing near a wooded area before exploding in flames and circulating billows of black smoke for miles. Nobody on the ground was hurt.

With Lisa L. Colangelo