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Pilot error probable cause of IAF Hercules crash

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The preliminary investigation into an 'unusual' crash of IAF's Hercules transport aircraft has strongly indicated 'human error' as the most probable reason for the crash. And the Indian Air Force has ruled out possibility of a serious technical snag in the crash of one of the world's safest military aircraft with four engines and other high end technology.

Though the IAF has ordered a court of inquiry to establish the cause of accident, initial investigation has pointed out an 'error of judgement' on the part of the pilot in maintaining the flying height. IAF has sent the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder to the US for its detailed analysis.

"The aircraft was on low level tactical flying mission, practising penetration of enemy's air defence. And the aircraft was supposed to fly at minimum 500 feet above the obstruction level. During manoeuvring, the aircraft fell off. But there was no distress call by the pilot before crash," said an officer.

IAF is maintaining that all three pilots on board were quite senior and experienced. "The lead pilot of the aircraft has more than 5,000 hours of flying experience and at least 1,000 hours of flying C-130 J aircraft. It is hard to believe that a human error caused the crash," said an IAF officer.

Meanwhile, the IAF has ruled out that the C-130J Super Hercules transport aircraft could have crashed due to suspected counterfeit Chinese parts and said it had already sent some of the equipment from the fleet to the US for physical verification by its manufacturer Lockheed Martin.

The IAF stressed that such parts were alleged to be present only in the display systems of the aircraft and it could not have caused the mishap in which five personnel were killed on Friday.

After the reports in 2012 suggested that Chinese counterfeit parts were fitted on some particular batches of C-130J aircraft, equipment on board our aircraft was sent to Lockheed Martin in batches for verification about the presence of Chinese counterfeit parts on our aircraft, an IAF spokesperson said.

"Almost all the batches of our equipment have come back and the firm has confirmed that such equipment was not present on our systems but the last batch of our equipment has not yet arrived and we are waiting for it," he said.

The IAF was responding to reports about the issue of presence of counterfeit Chinese equipment and suggestions that it could have been the possible cause behind the crash.

A committee of the US Senate in its probe in 2012 had suggested that counterfeit parts such as memory chips supplied by a Chinese company were used in C-130J planes produced between a specific period.
The IAF has already sent the black box of the C-130J transport aircraft that crashed near Gwalior to the US to seek the assistance of its manufacturer Lockheed Martin in decoding the data.

The Super Hercules Special Operations transport aircraft crashed in Rajasthan killing five crew members on Friday last after taking off from Agra. India had recently inducted six C-130J Super Hercules aircraft, which were bought from the US at a cost of around Rs 5,780 crore ($962 million) four years ago.

The home base of the 77 squadron 'Veiled Vipers' operating the aircraft is Hindon in Ghaziabad near New Delhi.

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