A Punjab-born surgeon, her two children and their partners were killed along with her husband, who was piloting a small plane that crashed in New York state, officials said on Sunday.
Joy Saini&rsquo;s family confirmed their deaths in a statement to the media. The tragic crash occurred on Saturday, while their Mitsubishi MU2B aircraft was attempting to land at Columbia County Airport, about 200 km from New York City, according to National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigator Albert Nixon.
Speaking at a news conference in Albany, Nixon said that the pilot missed the initial approach for landing and had requested to attempt another. However, air traffic controllers noticed the plane was flying at a dangerously low altitude. They tried three times to relay a low altitude alert&mdash;without receiving any response from the pilot. There was also no distress call.
Later, investigators obtained video footage capturing the final seconds of the flight. NTSB official Todd Inman said the video &ldquo;appears to show that the aircraft was intact and crashed at a high rate of descent into the ground.&rdquo; The wreckage was found &ldquo;compressed, buckled and embedded in the terrain&rdquo; of a muddy agricultural field, according to an AP report.
The pilot, Michael Groff&mdash;Saini&rsquo;s husband and an experienced flyer&mdash;was operating the aircraft under instrument flight rules rather than visual flight rules. Authorities are now investigating whether reduced visibility due to weather may have contributed to the crash.
The plane had departed from Westchester Airport in a New York City suburb and crashed about ten miles from Columbia County Airport, near the Massachusetts state border. The aircraft had been sold a year ago and was equipped with an upgraded cockpit that met Federal Aviation Administration standards, the NTSB said.
Saini, who immigrated to the US with her parents, earned her medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh, where she met Groff, a neurosurgeon. She was a urogynecologist and female pelvic reconstructive surgeon based in Boston, as per her practice&rsquo;s website.
Their daughter Karenna Groff, a medical student, and her partner James Santoro, an investment banker who was planning to propose, also died in the crash. Their son Jared Groff and his partner Alexia Couyutas Duarte, a law student, were likewise among the deceased.
Saini and Groff are survived by another daughter, Anika, and Saini&rsquo;s mother, Kuljit Singh.
This was the third plane crash in the US within three days. On Friday, a Cessna 310 aircraft crashed near Boca Raton, Florida, killing all three onboard. A day earlier, a sightseeing helicopter carrying a Spanish family of five crashed into the Hudson River off Manhattan, also resulting in the deaths of all six people on board.
(with inputs from IANS)
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Joy Saini (in red) with her husband Geoff (extreme left), daughter Karenna and her partner James Santoro

Urogynecologist Joy Saini, her husband and children among six killed in tragic incident; probe underway

Punjab-Born Surgeon, Family Die in US Plane Crash

Urogynecologist Joy Saini, her husband and children among six killed in tragic incident; probe underway

April 14, 2025 | 11:31 IST