7 years on, wreckage of IAF plane that went missing with 29 on board found 3.4 km under the sea
New Delhi, January 12
More than seven years after an Indian Air Force (IAF) plane went missing with 29 persons on board over the Bay of Bengal, its wreckage been located at a depth of 3.4 km under the sea.
The debris of the crashed AN32 transport plane (bearing tail number K-2743) was located 310 km east of Chennai, Tamil Nadu, a statement of the Ministry of Defence said on Friday.
The plane, a Soviet manufactured one, had taken off around 8.30 am from the Tambaram air base, Chennai on July 22, 2016. It had a last in contact with Chennai Air Traffic Controller at 8.46 am that is 16 minutes after the take-off. It was scheduled to land around 11 am at Port Blair in Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
A search and rescue operations launched in immediately after the crash – using aircraft and ships—could not locate any of the 29 personnel on board or the aircraft debris.
The IAF today said the National Institute of Ocean Technology which functions under the aegis of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, had recently deployed an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) with deep sea exploration capability.
The last known location of the missing AN-32 was used and the search was conducted at a depth of 3400 metre (3.4 km) using multiple payloads, including a multi-beam Sound Navigation and Ranging synthetic aperture SONAR and high resolution photography.
“The search images were scrutinised and found to be conforming with 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 crashed IAF An-32 (K-2743),” The MoD said.
Among the 29 persons on board were four IAF officers, including the two pilots and a navigator of the missing plane. The plane had six crew, including the three officers. A fourth officer was among the passengers.
Also on board were 10 other IAF personnel, two people from the Indian Army and nine from the navy, among them eight from the civilian staff of the force. A staff member of the Defence Services Corps and one from the Indian Coast Guard were also among those on board.
The AN-32 fleet was imported from Soviet Union in the early 1980s.
