While some officers maintained that the plane had undergone an upgrade in Ukraine, widely circulated reports sometime back had talked about the problems being faced by the multi-million dollar upgrade programme there.
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Parrikar has tweeted, that there were Efforts being made to trace the IAF AN 32 aircraft and the Service personnel who were on board the flight.
Mr. Krishnan was the only one from the Coast Guard, who was on board the missing aircraft, in which 28 others were on their way to Port Blair. “It fell off the radar at 9.12 am, 280 km east of Chennai”.
The aircraft took off from Tambaram Air Force Station in Chennai at 8.30 a.m., and was expected to land at Port Blair at 11.30 a.m., officials said. The plane’s last known contact with the ground control was at 8:46 am after which it vanished off the radar screens.
The twin-engine aircraft, which was on a routine courier sortie, has an endurance up to four hours, that is, it can fly for that period without refuelling. Air Force and Navy officials said that all possible assets have been deployed for the search mission.
Apart from the Navy, Coast Guard and Air Force, the Tamil Nadu Coastal Police have also participated in the search operations in the possible area of lose of contact by the missing aircraft.
Flag Officer, Coast Guard, Alok Bhatnagar on Saturday said that Navy and Coast Guard are out in full force to search for the missing aircraft but due to the hostile terrain they were not able to locate the aircraft.
India bought 125 AN-32 aircraft in 1984.
The plane, which has an endurance of over four hours, has an emergency beacon locator, which usually gets activated if there is a crash.
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The navy submarine has been sent to track any underwater transmission from the locater.
