No trace of IAF plane, worries mount

Hope of recovery and rescue appeared fading as no clue on the missing IAF transport plane with 29 on board emerged, despite the biggest search operation going on in the Bay of Bengal since the AN-32 disappeared from the radar shortly after takeoff from here for Port Blair, Andamans, early Friday.

“No clue, nothing yet”, was the cryptic response from a senior officer privy to the inflow of distressing information from the various rescue teams drenched out at the choppy sea, when this correspondent asked if there was any ‘good news’ end of day two even as reports trickled in of the grieving families cracking up in their dim-lit places through the night.

Some said a few in the 29 families, and friends, were openly upset seeing reports that the plane, K2743, had suffered three snags albeit not too serious just this month before that fatal Friday flight. They were not too impressed with the exhortations put out in sections of the media, TV channels in particular, of senior IAF officers speaking highly of the AN-32 as the force’s trusted workhorse with about 100 planes logging critically important missions transporting men and machines even in high altitudes. “Hopes are fast fading”, said another officer, requesting anonymity. He said while the choppy high waves made it risky to fly low to search for the debris, the thick clouds hanging low made it difficult to see from high above.

Defence minister Manohar Parrikar flew in Saturday morning along with Air chief Arup Raha on a two-hour trip that included a 30-minute briefing by senior IAF and naval officers followed by an aerial ‘survey’ over the ‘suspect’ area in the Bay, around where K2743 had gone off the radar at 0916 hours (Friday)—the plane had taken off at 0840 hours from the Tambaram IAF base for the 1400 km flight and lost radio contact 16 minutes later.

After the briefing on the progress, or the lack of it, in the search by as many as 18 navy and coast guard ships including a submarine, and eight aircraft like P 81, C130 and Dorniers, Minister Parrikar told the officers to ‘leave no stone unturned’ and press all the best services into operation for locating the plane. More resources could be diverted if need be, he said, and wanted the distressed families to be kept in the loop.

But then, Parrikar’s mission appeared to be more of a tokenism as he did not even know where he was heading for—he tweeted, ‘reached Tambaram’ whereas his special aircraft took him to the naval ‘INS Rajali’ near Arakkonam about 120 km away and he took off a couple of hours later from there itself, while the reporters and TV cameras waited outside the Tambaram base gates hoping to get the Raksha Mantri’s sound bytes. Those words of some reassurance from the Minister, made after the aerial survey, might have helped lift the morale of the families of the missing plane people.

The 29 people on board the missing plane included six crew members, two of them pilots and one navigator. Besides, there were 11 personnel from the IAF including a lady officer, two from the Army, one from the Coast Guard and nine from the navy which included some from its armament depot.

Defence minister Parrikar came for a personal briefing by the IAF officers at the Tambaram air base and an aerial survey of the area in the Bay of Bengal where the plane disappeared on radar at about 0915 hours on Friday, about 151 nautical miles east of Chennai.

He told the officers to use “the maximum resources” and leave nothing to chance in continuing the search operations. He wanted the families of the missing persons to be kept in the loop.

The Navy, Army and the NDRF have joined hands in what appears to be the biggest search-rescue operation at sea in recent time. The monsoon rain and choppy sea are making the search ops difficult. Air force sources said with waves over three metres high, it is dangerous to fly low to search for the aircraft debris, while the thick clouds hanging low make it difficult to see from high above.

IANS reported that the Indian space agency would be using its Radar Imaging Satellite (RISAT) that can see through the clouds to locate the missing plane. “We will be using RISAT to locate the missing aircraft. The satellite can take pictures both during the day and night. It can see through the clouds,” Isro chairman A.S. Kiran Kumar said.