A terrible tragedy

The Indian Air Force has been struck by the tragic loss of an An-32 transport aircraft with 29 personnel on board that went missing on Friday morning. It is presumed to have crashed into the Bay of Bengal while en route from the Tambaram air base to Port Blair, the headquarters of the Andaman and Nicobar Command, the country’s only tri-service command. Although a major search and rescue operation is in progress, it is unlikely that there would be any survivors. Only when the flight data recorder and other vital instruments are recovered can the IAF determine what led to the aircraft’s disappearance. Although this is the 13th crash involving an An-32 aircraft, it is until now the largest loss involving the number of personnel missing-presumed-killed while travelling on this military aircraft. 

The incident raises vital questions pertaining to the health of the IAF fleet. It particularly raises the issue of maintenance considering that the missing aircraft had encountered three snags pertaining to pressure leak, hydraulics and a sluggish throttle in the preceding 10  days. This was despite this aircraft having undergone a major overhaul and a mid-life extension. This versatile Soviet-origin An-32, which was inducted in 1984, continues to be the work horse of the IAF transporting supplies and troops to the remotest of areas ranging from the Siachen glacier in Ladakh to make-shift advance landing grounds in Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur. But the aircraft has been periodically hit by maintenance and serviceability issues. For example, in 2009, a staggering 61 of the 105-odd An-32s had to be grounded because facilities for extending the technical life and overhauling of the aircraft could not be established in time. 

The An-32 is not the IAF’s only aircraft facing this problem. Frontline fighter aircraft, including the upgraded MiG-21 Bison and the advanced Sukhoi-30 have been plagued by maintenance and serviceability issues. The government needs to urgently address these issues considering that precious lives, expensive aircraft and the image of a professional Air Force are at stake, not to forget that it impacts on defence preparedness.