From Jane's Defence Weekly:
Indian Army wives campaign to get Chetak, Cheetahs taken out of service
A group of Indian Army officers' wives have demanded that the Army Aviation Corps (AAC) stop using its fleet of obsolete Chetak (Aerospatiale Alouette III) and Cheetah (Aerospatiale SA315B Lama) helicopters due to their high accident rate.
The 28-strong Indian Army Wives Agitation Group - all of whom are married to AAC pilots or technicians assigned to these two platforms - claim that 191 of the helicopters have crashed over the past two decades, killing 294 officers.
"Every time officers go on a sortie on either of these helicopters, their families are on tenterhooks," group head Meenal Bhosale told IHS Jane's on 25 November by phone from Nashik, western India. "And each time they land safely it's like they have been given a new lease of life," added Bhosale, whose husband is an AAC engineering officer.
The group was formed on 2 October, the day after a Cheetah crashed in north India, killing two pilots and an engineer on board. It has created an online petition demanding the two helicopters' withdrawal from service that has received 20,000 signatures in support.
The group has petitioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Ministry of Defence to retire the about 120 Chetaks and Cheetahs still in service. Most are deployed to sustain Indian Army formations in the Himalayas.
However, senior AAC officers said they had no alternative but to continue operating the platforms, which entered service in the mid-1960s, for another 4-5 years until replacements were acquired.
India finally put the replacement LUH/RSH program out of its misery in
August after over 15 years of dithering, choosing to launch a new effort to buy a
theoretical home-grown product in lieu of the 407, AS550, AW119 or Ka-226. So those Chetaks & Cheetahs are likely to remain in service for some time yet.
I/C