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Did the AN-32 plane face a catastrophic threat to vanish suddenly?
Chennai, July 22
Only a catastrophic accident in a "no talk/radio zone" or "dead zone" could destroy an aircraft suddenly, said an experienced pilot with the Indian defence forces, after an Indian Air Force (IAF) AN-32 transport aircraft, with 29 people on board, vanished suddenly from the radar soon after it took off from here for Port Blair on Friday.
"Planes are designed to fly even during an emergency. There will be reaction time to the pilots facing an emergency to send out messages for help or turn towards safety," the pilot, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told IANS.
According to him, an AN-32 aircraft will not drop down like a stone or vanish into thin air in the case of normal emergency, as there will be reaction time.
"But in the case of a catastrophic threat, the pilots will not have the necessary reaction time," he added.
He said going by information available at present, the IAF craft was off the radar at around 9.16 a.m. after it took off at 8.30 a.m. from the Tambaram Air Force Station near here.
"The aircraft would have reached a cruising altitude of around 23,000 ft and be around 150 km away from the shore," he said.
According to him, an aircraft will not always be on the radar.
"If the distance to be travelled is around 1,500 km for instance then there are chances that the aircraft could not be in the radar from the city of departure after say around 300 km. And it would come into the radar on the other side only when it is around 300 km from its destination," he said.
"So effectively sometimes there will be a dead zone of 700 km. In smaller aircraft, the pilots switch on to the high frequency for being in touch," he said.
Coming to the probable cause of its vanishing suddenly, he said: "The possibilities of different catastrophic events happening in the sky cannot be ruled out."
"For example if an aircraft is caught in a strong thunderstorm, then a plane is as good as a paper caught in the storm.
"The storm will throw the plane like a stone," he said.
According to him, there have been instances when an airplane that was flying at around 35,000 feet altitude dropped down to 5,000 feet but regained control after that.
The other catastrophic events that can happen to a plane are: sudden failure of all the engines; devastasting fire; fuel leakage, jamming of flight controls, loss of flight controls due to fire; power and electrical failure and others.
He said in the best case scenario if the AN-32 had come down gradually then it would have been picked up by some radar or the pilots would have the time to react.
"Landing in sea is near impossibility though the craft manufacturers may say so," he added.
Those on board included six crew members, 15 personnel from the IAF, army, navy and Coast Guard, and eight civilians who were family members of the personnel.
Eight of the passengers were employees of Naval Armament Depot (NAD) in Visakkhapatnam. Their families were worried over the fate of their loved ones and were anxiously waiting for some information from the ongoing search operations.
The aircraft, an upgraded AN-32 belonging to 33 Squadron, took off from Tambaram Air Force Station in Chennai at 8.30 a.m., and was expected to land at Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands at 11.30 a.m., officials said, describing it as a "routine sortie".
According to a report submitted to Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar by Air Force Chief Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha, according to the recorded transcript of Chennai air traffic radar, last pickup was 151 nautical miles east of Chennai, when the aircraft was observed to have carried out a left turn with rapid loss of height from 23,000 feet.
A massive search and rescue operation involving aircraft, helicopters, ships and a submarine was launched immediately to find the plane that went missing around 300 km off Chennai, and will continue through the night.
The last contact with the aircraft was established roughly around 15-20 minutes after the take-off, sources said.
As the aircraft went missing, a full-scale search and rescue operation was launched immediately.
"Efforts on to trace IAF AN 32 aircraft and our Service personnel on board," Parrikar said in a tweet.
The Eastern Naval Command (ENC) deployed two P8I long-range maritime surveillance aircraft with advanced electro-optics and radars, two Dornier aircraft and 12 ships with integral helicopters to join the search operations.
Four ships of the ENC, deployed in the Bay of Bengal on different missions, were diverted to the search area while eight ships of the Eastern Fleet, which were on return journey from the South China Sea, were also made to proceed to join in the operations.
A submarine at sea was diverted as well for locating transmissions from the emergency locator beacon onboard the aircraft. Emergency locator beacons usually get activated in case a plane crashes.
Ships deployed for the search include Shivalik-class stealth frigate INS Sahyadri, guided-missile destroyers INS Rajput and Ranvijay, corvettes Kamorta, Kirch, Karmuk, Kora, Kuthar, fleet tankers INS Shakti and INS Jyoti, amphibious warfare vessel INS Gharial and patrol vessel INS Sukanya, the Indian Navy said. Four Coast Guard ships are also involved in the operations.
The incident comes a year after a Coast Guard Dornier aircraft with three crew members on board for a routine surveillance flight went missing.
The search team found its black box nearly a month later. The skeletal remains and personal belongings of the crew members were recovered from the sea bed off the Tamil Nadu coast.
India bought 125 AN-32 aircraft in 1984. The IAF at present has a fleet of over 100 AN-32s.
The Russian-origin aircraft is known for its excellent take-off characteristics in hot and high conditions, and is suitable for use as a medium tactical military transport. The twin-engine aircraft is primarily used for transporting cargo and passengers, including skydivers and paratroopers.
After India decided in 2009 to get the aircraft upgraded, 40 were upgraded in Ukraine and the rest in the country.
The final batch of upgraded AN-32RE aircraft was delivered last year, and the modifications have increased the life of these aircraft by 15 years to serve till 2035, according to experts. However, the modernisation programme in India was hit by the situation in Ukraine and shortage of spare parts.
