ANI photo

NEW DELHI: The wreckage of the Antonov-32 that went missing eight days ago has finally been “located” in a remote mountainous area in Arunachal Pradesh , in a development that may eventually bring at least some closure to the families of the six officers and seven other personnel on board the ill-fated medium transport aircraft.

The IAF plans to “heli-drop” some Garud commandos, mountaineers and other personnel near the crash site, around 16-km north of Lipo, north-east of Tato in the West Siang district of Arunachal, after the wreckage was “spotted from the air” by Mi-17 helicopters on Tuesday afternoon. “Efforts are underway to establish the status of the 13 personnel on board,” said an officer.

“The wreckage is in a dense forest close to a hill top at an elevation of around 12,000-feet, where even light helicopters cannot land. A heli-drop is being planned on Wednesday morning because it will take two-three days for ground parties to reach the site on foot. A nearby landing site has also been identified,” he added.

The possibility of finding survivors is, unfortunately, considered bleak. The officers on board the AN-32, which went missing on way to Mechuka (Arunachal) from Jorhat (Assam) on June 3, were Wing Commander G M Charles, Squadron Leader H Vinod, Flight Lieutenants Mohit Garg, Sumit Mohanty, Ashish Tanwar and Rajesh Thapa. The other ranks were Warrant Officer K K Mishra, Sergeant Anoop, Corporal Sharin, airmen Pankaj Sangwan and S K Singh and non-combatants Rajesh Kumar and Putali.

Before the AN-32 crash, IAF had already lost six fighters, two Hawk advanced jet trainers and a Mi-17 helicopter this year, with 10 personnel being killed in them. This unacceptably high crash rate once again reinforces how a combination of ageing aircraft, shoddy maintenance and poor upgrades as well as inadequate training to pilots and technicians continues to make a dangerous mix in the IAF.

The court of inquiry (CoI) will establish whether it was a technical snag or some sort of “human error” in the treacherous weather and terrain conditions of Arunachal Pradesh that led to the latest crash. But the twin-engine turboprop AN-32 in question was yet to be upgraded with airframe strengthening, advanced avionics and radars to fly in difficult conditions, as was first reported by TOI.

“If the AN-32’s cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) are recovered in good condition, they can provide crucial details for the CoI,” said another official. Only 54 of the 99 AN-32s in the IAF fleet, which were inducted from the erstwhile Soviet Union between 1984 and 1991, have been upgraded with “technical life extension from the original 25 years to 40 years, overhaul and re-equipment” till now under an initial $400 million contract with Ukraine in 2009.

Bilateral problems between Russia and Ukraine over the Crimean Peninsula have hit the supply of spares, components and kits for the AN-32 upgrade project, which was originally slated for completion by 2013. There have also been some allegations of defective parts and spares being supplied for the planes.

The upgrade project, incidentally, was finalized after another AN-32 on an “air maintenance sortie” had crashed in the same Jorhat-Mechuka-Mohanbari sector on June 9, 2009. That AN-32 also had 13 military personnel on board like the one that went missing on June 3 this year. The CoI into the 2009 crash held it was due to `human error (aircrew)’, with the aircraft hitting a mountain after the pilots got disoriented after entering some clouds. In technical terms, it was an incident of “controlled flight into terrain (C-FIT)”.



In Video: Wreckage of missing IAF AN-32 found in Arunachal Pradesh's Siang district