More than 24 hours since the Indian Air Force’s AN-32 aircraft (K-2743) with 29 persons on board went missing from the radars, “no clue” could be obtained over its whereabouts, even as ships, aircraft and a submarine are involved in the intensive search operations in the Bay of Bengal, some 150 nautical miles east of Chennai.
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The search operation is braving monsoon weather conditions and poor visibility wherein IAF, Indian Navy and Indian Coast Guard have pooled in all available resources to look for any possible sign of the aircraft in this vast swath of Bay of Bengal between Chennai and Port Blair, said a statement from defence ministry.
A massive search operation involving more than 15 navy and coastguard vessels, a submarine and Indian Air Force aircraft had been ongoing since Friday. He also reviewed the situation on ground and flew over the area of operations in a P-8I Long Range Maritime Patrol Aircraft of the Navy.
He was apprised of the hard conditions under which operations were being carried out during the last 24 hours. The state of the sea is 3 to 4 and is very choppy with thick monsoon clouds in the area, making the search effort quite challenging.
Parrikar, however, directed that the search operations should be continued unhindered till further orders, they added.
The plane left the Tambaram air base near Chennai at 8.30 am on Friday and was to have landed at Port Blair around 11.45 am. Air force spokesman Anupam Banerjee said that the last communication from the aircraft was about 15 minutes post-takeoff. According to the sources, the aircraft was flying at about 23,000 feet at that time and appeared to have lost altitude suddenly. There were no distress signals from the pilot. Merchant ship Harshavardhan en route from Port Blair to Chennai was asked to go to the site as it was closest to the last known location of the missing aircraft.
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NAVY PINS HOPE ON SUBMARINE Asubmarine that detected the beacon of a missing Coast Guard Dornier off the Chennai coast one year ago has been enlisted in the search operation. “We are covering every bit, we are going to start a systematic and scientific search, we will also place our ships to different areas sooner”, he said. On standby are a Dornier, an AN-32, two C-130 which has electro-optical and infrared sensors, and one MI-17 helicopters.
