Wreckage of IAF's AN-32 plane found 7.5 years after it went missing

Wreckage of IAF’s AN-32 plane found 7.5 years after it went missing

NEW DELHI: The wreckage of an Antonov-32 transport aircraft of the IAF, which went missing with 29 personnel while flying over the Bay of Bengal on way to Port Blair from Chennai in July 2016, has finally been found by an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) of the National Institute of Ocean Technology.

Images of the aircraft debris lying on the sea bed, at a depth of 3,400 meters around 140 nautical miles (310 Km) from the Chennai coast, were taken by the unmanned AUV, which is geared for deep sea exploration of polymetallic nodules, a few days ago.

“Scrutiny of the search images showed the debris conformed to an AN-32 aircraft. This discovery at the probable crash site, with no other recorded history of any other missing aircraft report in the same area, points to the debris as possibly belonging to the missing AN-32 (registration K-2743),” IAF spokesperson Wing Commander Ashish Moghe said on Friday.

The AUV, with multiple payloads including a multi-beam sonar (sound navigation and ranging), synthetic aperture sonar and high resolution photographic equipment, had recently been deployed at the last known location of the missing AN-32.

The IAF would obviously like the aircraft wreckage to be salvaged in order for the families of those killed to get closure as well as investigate the exact reason for the crash. “But it will prove extremely difficult and expensive at that depth. The possibility of finding human remains is also quite less,” a Navy officer said.

One of the deepest successful salvage operations, incidentally, is said to be that of a US Navy C-2A Greyhound transport aircraft from a depth of around 5,600 meters in the Philippine Sea in 2019.

The IAF, Navy and Coast Guard had mounted a massive search and rescue operation, with aircraft, helicopters, warships and even a submarine being deployed, after the Russian-origin AN-32 went missing on way to Port Blair from the Tambaram airbase in Chennai on July 22 in 2016.

The four officers on board the twin-engine AN-32 were the two pilots, Flight Lieutenant Pushpendra Badsara and Flying Officer Pankaj Kumar Nanda, navigator Flight Lieutenant Kunal Barpatte, and a passenger Flight Lieutenant Deepika Sheoran, who was married to a Coast Guard officer based at Port Blair.

The plane was also carrying 17 other military personnel as well as eight civilians from the naval armament depot at Vizag, who were on their way to repair a close-range naval gun (CRN-91) of a small warship at Port Blair.

The last radio contact with the AN-32 was at 8.46 am, 16 minutes after it had taken off on the “routine courier flight” on that day. It was last spotted on radars at about 9.15 am, around 151 nautical miles due east of Chennai.

The aircraft, which was slated to land at Port Blair at 11.30 am, was observed to have carried out a left turn with rapid loss of height from its flying altitude of 23,000-feet. But there was no Mayday call from the aircraft, which had an endurance of four hours and 15 minutes.

Almost 20 naval warships and Coast Guard vessels and as well as two P-8I long-range maritime patrol aircraft, a C-130J Super Hercules, three Dorniers and several helicopters were deployed to locate the missing AN-32 from the 33 Squadron at the Sulur airbase in the “extended probable crash zone”.

Apart from the use of satellite imaging, a Sindhughosh-class submarine was also diverted from an operational mission to aid the search operation. But no trace of the AN-32, which did not have an underwater locator beacon, was ever found till now.

The sturdy AN-32s have been IAF workhorses in ferrying troops and cargo to forward areas since they were first inducted in 1984. Though they have a relatively good flight safety record, the AN-32s are quite old despite their life-extension and upgrade refits.

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