At 2.30pm on 22 July,2016 exactly four years ago, an Indian Air Force Antonov An-32 transport aircraft disappeared from radar during a flight from Chennai to Port Blair in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. A seven week search involving 16 ships, aircraft from across services, a pair of submarines and all the satellite resources India could muster, threw up nothing. In September 2016, less than two months after the aircraft had disappeared, the Indian Air Force gave up the search, designating the 29 men on board presumed dead.
The total casualities included 6 crew memeber and 29 passangers of which 17 members were from the Indian Air force including 6 IAF crew, 11 Indian air force personnel, and the remaining were as follows 2 Indian Army soldiers , 1 Indian Navy personnel and 1 personnel from the Indian Coast Guard and 8 Defence civilians working with Naval Armament Depot.
Date:Friday 22 July 2016
Type: Antonov An-32
Operator:Indian Air Force - IAF
Registration:K2743C/n / msn:0809
First flight:1986
Crew:Fatalities: 6 / Occupants: 6
Passengers:Fatalities: 23 / Occupants: 23
Total:Fatalities: 29 / Occupants: 29
Aircraft damage:MissingAircraft
fate:Presumed damaged beyond repair
Location:ca 280 km E off Chennai [Bay of Bengal] (Indian Ocean)
Phase:En route (ENR)
Nature:Military
Departure airport:Tambaram Air Base (VOTX), India
Destination airport:Port Blair Airport (IXZ/VOPB), India
The aircraft took off from Tambaram at 08:30 and was expected to arrive at Port Blair at 11:30. The aircraft was last detected on radar 151 nautical miles (280 km) east of Chennai, making a left turn with a rapid loss of height from 23,000 ft, according to the Defence Ministry.
Underwater search efforts were terminated on October 3, 2016 due to rough weather as well as tethering problems with the ROV.
Well this was not the first Antonov crash, earlier An Indian Air Force An-12, Tail Number. BL534 had been on a flight from Chandigarh to Leh on 7 February 1968 when the crew decided to turn back after running into ferocious weather. During the return, the aircraft, with 98 men on board, disappeared from radar somewhere over the Rohtang Pass, never again to be heard from. The first human remains were located 35 years after the disappearance in 2003. But the July 11 discovery in the Dakka glacier by a group of mountaineers on an environmental expedition to clean up garbage on local peaks are now understood to be the first bits of wreckage from the doomed An-12. While four bodies were recovered in separate expeditions from 2003-2009, the remaining 98 are nowhere to be found.
A year before the An-32 disappeared, an Indian Coast Guard Dornier Do-228 went missing over the Bay of Bengal with three men on board. While the aircraft was later found after an extensive search that involved civilian ships and robotic equipment used for energy deposit surveys, there is almost no hope that we will know what happened to An-32 No. K2743.
Nor is it likely that the Indian Air Force will ever find the other aircraft that went missing in 1986, also an An-32. On March 25 that year, An-32 No. 2729, a brand new airframe, went missing over the Arabian Sea during a delivery ferry flight from Oman to Jamnagar. Neither the wreckage nor the seven on board were ever found.
The remains of a total of 134 men across the three disappearances haven’t been located.
INDIAN FIST SALUTES THE VALOUR OF ALL THE BRAVE MEN WHO LOST THEIR LIVES IN THE ABOVE MENTIONED CRASHES .
"JAI HIND, JAI HIND KI SENA"
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