The pilot of the doomed Air India flight that crashed last week may have made a last-ditch heroic act that saved thousands of lives, according to reports.

The tragic incident saw an aircraft said to be a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner crash less than a minute after taking off from Ahmedabad, India, colliding with a medical college hostel and claiming the lives of 270 people.

An investigation into what exactly happened is ongoing, with the plane having experienced difficulties from the second it left the runway.

Captain Sumeet Sabharwal was the first pilot onboard, and at his side he had his second pilot, Officer Clive Kundar. Sabharwal, it’s said, was closing on retirement, while Kundar’s aviation career was just getting started.

The two raised the alarm in connection with the terrible crash, and their tragic message has now been made public.

“Mayday… no thrust, losing power, unable to lift,” Sabharwal said in his final message to air traffic control.

As stated, the plane crashed into a medical college hostel, killing a number of people on the ground, as well as all those but one onboard the aircraft.

Yet virtually impossible as it is to find any kind of silver lining in such a heartbreaking tragedy, the death toll might have been significantly higher if not for the actions of the pilot.