The team from DGCA investigating Friday's helicopter crash in Sirohi, Rajasthan, will visit Air Traffic Control at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel international airport in Ahmedabad
The team from Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) investigating Friday's helicopter crash in Sirohi, Rajasthan, will visit Air Traffic Control (ATC) at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel international airport in Ahmedabad.
The team will examine the case from the Gandhinagar angle as the ill-fated chopper had taken off from Gujarat's capital city before it crashed on the hilly terrain of Rajasthan's Sirohi district. All the four people in the helicopter were killed in the incident.
Sources, however, said that the Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) that helps in locating an aircraft through satellites was reportedly not functioning in the Pawan Hans helicopter.
If this is the case, the helicopter would have been difficult to trace if the accident had happened in a deserted area of the district.
Sources said there is a similarity between the helicopter crash in Sirohi and the two chopper crashes that took the life of Andhra Pradesh chief minister YS Rajasekhar Reddy and Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Dorjee Khandu in Tawang, respectively.
In these accidents, too, the ELT which transmits its location to the satellites was not working.
The ELT is the most helpful device in finding the location of a crashed aircraft, thereby ensuring that rescue operations start almost immediately.
Earlier, the DGCA had issued guidelines for the installation of ELTs of 406 MHz frequency on all aircraft by March 31, 2010.
"The helicopter that crashed in Sirohi was located soon because it came downin a village. Some people informed the authorities when they saw the helicopter crashing in a ball of fire," sources said.
The sources added that because of poor maintenance of the Pawan Hans chopper, the ELT installed in it was reportedly not working.
The DGCA team is investigating to find out exactly what went wrong with the helicopter that crashed in Sirohi. On Monday, the team will visit the ATC office at the city airport to investigate several other aspects of the crash.
Sources said that an hour before the crash, the pilot had a formal conversation with the ATC officials.
"It was a normal conversation, something that happens every time an aircraft takes off. The pilot had said everything was normal. He didn't say something was wrong," a source said.
The source further said that the chopper was more than 20 years old and because of the alleged poor maintenance, some technical problem might have led to the unfortunate incident.
In the accident that took place on Friday afternoon, pilot (rtd) Colonel Bal, co-pilot deputy commandant (BSF) Vivek Chaudhary, engineer SS Chopra and a sub-inspector Sohanlal were killed in Fatehpur village of Sirohi district.
The helicopter belonged to the Border Security Force (BSF). It had taken off from Gandhinagar at 2:20 pm and was to land in Jodhpur at 4:20 pm but it crashed at around 3:30pm.
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