Indian Air Force AN 32 Plane With 29 On Board Goes Missing

[Dimitri Cherchenko]

"An Indian Air Force (IAF) AN-32 plane with 29 on board is missing after it took off from Chennai this morning.

The plane took off from the Tambaram air base near Chennai a little after 8 am and was heading for Port Blair and was to have landed around 11.20 am.

Officials say the last contact with the plane was around 15 minutes after take-off. The plane has an emergency beacon locator, which usually gets activated if the aircraft crashes.

The Navy has launched surveillance aircraft to look for the missing plane in the Bay of Bengal. A Dornier aircraft has also been sent and four ships, Karmukh, Gharial, Jyoti and Kuthar have been diverted to the region at full speed.

There are more than 100 AN-32s in service with the IAF."


Indian Air Force AN 32 Plane With 29 On Board Missing, Massive Search Ops On (http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/indian-air-force-plane-with-over-25-on-board-goes-missing-1434708)

[Lonewolf_50]

From this source (http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/29-on-board-indian-air-force-an-32-missing-search-ops-on-live-updates-1434753):


Indian Air Force AN-32 Transport Aircraft Missing
6 crew members - 3 officers, 1 air-staff and 2 ground-staff members
11 from Air Force
2 from Army
1 from Navy
8 civilians (family members)
1 from Coast Guard


EDIT: I had 1 versus 11 for the Air Force head count. Typo.

[atakacs]

From this source (http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/29-on-board-indian-air-force-an-32-missing-search-ops-on-live-updates-1434753):


Indian Air Force AN-32 Transport Aircraft Missing
6 crew members - 3 officers, 1 air-staff and 2 ground-staff members
1 from Air Force
2 from Army
1 from Navy
8 civilians (family members)
1 from Coast Guard
That's a total of 19 (vs 29 announced earlier).

Do they really need 6 persons to operate the An-32 ? Anyone knows if this was one of the "modernized" one (which are flown by a crew of 2) ?

[Hotel Tango]

The answer is in your quote! They are not all FD crew. Pay attention at the back!

[Lonewolf_50]

Apologies, I have corrected the initial quote to 11 Air Force since I had only 1 Air Force member accounted for. Left off the tens digit. :ugh:


(I hope they find them floating in the ocean ... cross fingers).

[varunkrish]

Really sad news this is :( Is the something to do with the weather over the Bay of Bengal yesterday ? It is monsoon season here with some occasional rains.

I live in Chennai and most of my east-bound flights are turbulent over this mass of water and gets smoother once I get near land.

I was a SQ flight as Pax recently from MAA to SIN and it was raining during our departure and the seat belt sign was on for nearly 2.5 hours on a 4 hour flight!

[nashama]

Did they find anything?

[atakacs]

Still no news here?

[short bus]

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2016/07/26/Pings-heard-in-search-for-missing-Indian-air-force-transport-plane-no-wreckage-found/3051469541724/


CHENNAI, India, July 26 (UPI) -- Indian air force teams, searching for a missing military transport plane, are scrambling to determine if four to five pings heard on the ocean floor are from an emergency beacon on the Russian-made aircraft that vanished with 29 people aboard.