Canadian on missing Malaysian Airlines plane lost grandfather to 1973 plane crash

There’s a sad sense of déjà vu for the family of Muktesh Mukherjee, a Canadian who was on board the Malaysian Airlines jet which disappeared on Saturday.

They fear the flight has crashed in the South China Sea.

Mukherjee, 42, was travelling with his wife Xiaomao Bai, 37. The two were returning from a vacation in Vietnam on Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370, which disappeared from radar on Saturday morning.

“We are living in fear of a second disaster in the air in our family,” says an unnamed family member in The Times of India.

The Canadian couple’s sons, aged nine and two, often travelled with them on vacations. This time, they stayed behind in the family home in Beijing, according to media reports.

Mukherjee’s grandfather was Mohan Kumaramangalam, a minister in the government of Indira Gandhi, who was killed in May 1973 in a crash near Delhi.

Kumaramangalam was killed when Indian Airlines Flight 440 crashed on landing near Delhi in low visibility. Forty-eight people died (17 survived) when the Boeing 737 hit a high tension wire near Indira Gandhi International Airport.

The Times said that Mukherjee met Bai in January 2002 while he was on business in Beijing and she was working as his translator.

Mukherjee earned a master’s degree in international business from McGill University while Bai reportedly attended the Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Mukherjee studied at McGill from 1996 to 1998. He worked at ArcellorMittal, an international steel and mining corporation, from 2005 to May 2012, in management posts in international sales, marketing and management, according to his LinkedIn page.

His father is a retired senior executive with ArcelorMittal Group and an uncle is a senior advocate with the Calcutta High Court.

Mukherjee become general manager at ArcelorMittal China in December 2008, based in Beijing.

The couple were married within six months of first meeting each other, according to Indian media reports.

Mukherjee became vice-president of China operations for Xcoal Energy in May 2012.

Mukherjee’s Twitter page shows him holding a toddler and reads, “still adjusting to the middle kingdom! Beijing.”

His mother Uma lives in Dubai, according to the Daily Mail newspaper.