IAF Chopper crash in Arunachal pradesh ,12 killed

An Indian Air Force helicopter crashed near Tawang in northwestern Arunachal Pradesh on Friday afternoon killing all 12 officers and crew on board. An explosion barely three minutes after take-off is said to be the cause of the crash. Eyewitnesses said the helicopter ‘burst like crackers’ after

ascending from the army helipad near the Korea Brigade headquarters in Tawang.
It crashed at Bomdir. Tawang’s civilian helipad is located at Bomdir.

“We saw the helicopter go boom like a massive firecracker,” said local trader Sonam Thinley from Tawang.

IAF officials ruled out weather as a factor in the crash – Tawang was sunny on Friday. But they were reluctant to attribute it to an explosion.

“Technical fault is a possibility but everything will be clear after the commission of inquiry set up to probe the crash submits its report,” said a senior IAF officer.

“The bodies of all the officers and crew have been recovered. They included 11 IAF personnel, two of them flight lieutenants and an army officer (lieutenant colonel),” said Lt Col Rajesh Kalia, spokesman of the army’s 4 Corps based at Tezpur in central Assam.

The eastern Himalayan belt from Tawang to Mechuka in West Siang district (central Arunachal Pradesh) is considered aviation-unfriendly. But IAF choppers and army’s AN-32 aircraft often have to operate in this belt to service defence personnel in forward posts along the border with China.

Friday’s mishap, though, is the first in 13 years not blamed on weather. On May 14 last year, 14 army personnel died when the AN-32 they were traveling in from Mechuka to Jorhat (Air Force base, central Assam) crashed soon after take-off from an advanced landing ground.

In May 2001, Arunachal Pradesh minister Dera Natung and five others died when their Pawan Hans aircraft crashed near Tawang due to poor visibility. On 14 November 1997, minister of state for defence NVN Somu and Major General Ramesh Nagpal and two others died when their four-seater Cheetah hit a peak 40 km from Tawang.

Source: Hindustantimes

Posted by musicking on Nov 19 2010. Filed under Breaking News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry