New Delhi: The debris of a transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force (IAF), which had gone missing in 2016, was found at a depth of around 3.4 km in the Bay of Bengal off the Chennai coast. The aircraft with 29 personnel on board had gone missing nearly seven and a half years back.
According to news agency PTI, an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) designed by the National Institute of Ocean Technology, was launched to trace the wreckage of the missing aircraft in the Bay of Bengal. It was developed to carry out deep-sea exploration.
An Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) designed for deep-sea exploration has searched debris of the IAF Jet AN-32, which crashed in the Bay of Bengal in 2016. pic.twitter.com/9PFfQ8irMu
— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) January 12, 2024
“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,” the Defence Ministry said in a statement.
According to the Defence Ministry, the search operation was conducted at a depth of 3,400 metres with the help of multiple payloads, including a multi-beam SONAR (Sound Navigation and Ranging), synthetic aperture SONAR and high-resolution photography.
“Analysis of search images had indicated the presence of debris of a crashed aircraft on the sea bed approximately 140 nautical miles (3.10 km) from the Chennai coast,” the ministry further said in its statement.
The An-32 transport aircraft, with flight number K-2743, and with 29 personnel including, eight civilians, had taken off from Tambaran air base in Chennai on Jully 22, 2016. It was supposed to land at Port Blair in Andaman and Nicobar Islands around 11:45 am.
Sixteen minutes after the take-off, the pilot made the last call and announced, “Everything is normal”. However, soon after, the aircraft rapidly lost altitude from 23,000 feet and went off the radar. It was last traced 280 km off the Chennai coast.
Nearly eight years after the crash, the aircraft’s wreckage has been located 310 km from the coast in the same area.
