An Indian Air Force AN-32 transport plane with 29 persons on board bound for Port Blair went missing over the Bay of Bengal shortly after takeoff from Tambaram airbase in Chennai on Friday morning.
An Indian Air Force AN-32 transport plane with 29 persons on board bound for Port Blair went missing over the Bay of Bengal shortly after takeoff from Tambaram airbase in Chennai on Friday morning. A massive search operation by the IAF, Navy and Coast Guard had not yielded any clue till late Friday night, while rough seas in the area where it last made contact at 8.46 am, 16 minutes after takeoff, made search operations difficult, sources said.
“The plane is still missing. All efforts are being made to trace the plane and the service personnel on board”, defence minister Manohar Parrikar was quoted as saying by PTI. Navy spokesman Capt. D.K. Sharma said: “The Navy has been deployed in full force in the Bay of Bengal for search and rescue operations.”
The twin-engine plane captained by Flight Lieutenant Badsara and co-piloted by Flying Officer Nandal had taken off on a regular courier sortie at 8.30 am. “After about 15 minutes, we lost radio contact and about 20 minutes after that the last blip on radar was recorded by the air controller,” a source said.
The aircraft reportedly took a sharp left turn and then suddenly descended from a height of about 23,000 feet when it was about 150 nautical miles from Tambaram, the source said. It was expected to reach Port Blair by 11.30 am and had fuel to be airborne for four-and-a-half hours.
The 29 persons on board includes six crew and 23 passengers, comprising 11 IAF personnel, nine from the Navy, including eight civilians, two from the Army and one from the Coast Guard.
The plane was not really in good shape, sources said, recalling there were three faults reported on the aircraft just this month — sluggish throttle movement on July 2, hydraulic leak from the port wing root on July 7 and pressure leak from port door on July 14.
In the past 10 years, four AN-32s have crashed, with 101 aircraft currently in the IAF fleet. AN-32s are Russian-made medium tactical transport aircraft used mainly by the IAF for troop and cargo transportation, paradropping and casualty evacuation. It is the IAF’s workhorse and is used to transport troops and supplies to forward areas. Some officers said that the plane had undergone an upgrade in Ukraine, but other reports some time back talked about problems being faced by the multi-million dollar upgrade programme there.
The Coast Guard said its reconnaissance Dornier had reached the site from where the AN-32 sent out its last signals. “Our Dornier (plane) reached the site where the signals were sent by the (IAF) aircraft for the last time. We are looking for clues,” said a senior Coast Guard official. The Coast Guard has rushed four ships — ICGS Sagar and ICGS Samudra Pehredar from Chennai and ICGS Rajshree and ICGS Rajveer from Port Blair — to the spot. Another ship, ICGS Vishwasth, is on standby at Port Blair. “The ships should reach the spot by night. But the rough sea is making operations difficult,” the official added.
