Wreckage of IAF's AN-32 aircraft traced in Bay of Bengal more than 7 years after it went missing

The aircraft had taken off from the Tambaram air base with 29 passengers for Port Blair on July 22, 2016 for an operational mission. Within minutes it disappeared from the sky.

New Delhi: More than seven years after an Indian Air Force’s AN-32 transport plane vanished over the Bay of Bengal, Indian scientists have found the ill-fated aircraft’s debris at a crash site 310 km off the Chennai coast.

“This discovery at the probable crash site, with no other recorded history of any other missing aircraft report in the same area, points to the debris as possibly belonging to the crashed IAF An-32,” the IAF said here on Friday.

For the search, scientists at the National Institute of Ocean Technology, Chennai deployed an autonomous underwater vehicle with deep sea exploration capability in an area close to the last known location of the missing transporter. The debris was located at a depth of 3.4 km.

The autonomous underwater vehicle with deep sea exploration capability. 

“It was a bit of a chance discovery. Last week, the AUV was being tested for a deep sea mission to be undertaken in the southern Indian Ocean, when it first captured the images of the wreck. We contacted the IAF, which confirmed the aircraft,” M Ravichandran, Secretary, Union Ministry of Earth Sciences told DH.

The aircraft (registration number K-2743) took off from Tambaram air base with 29 passengers for Port Blair on July 22, 2016 for an operational mission. Within minutes it disappeared from the sky.

An IAF spokesperson said the NIOT underwater vehicle conducted searches at a depth of 3400 m using multiple payloads, including a multi-beam SONAR (Sound Navigation and Ranging), synthetic aperture SONAR and high resolution photography.

Analysis of search images had indicated the presence of debris of a crashed aircraft on the sea bed approximately 140 nautical miles (310 Km) from Chennai.

The disappearance of the aircraft remained one of India’s biggest aviation mysteries as extensive searchers using the Navy and Coast Guard ships, IAF and naval aircraft and Indian Space Research Organisation’s satellites hit a stonewall.

The aircraft did not send out the emergency 'Mayday' distress signal and vanished from the sky within 16 minutes of starting its journey for Port Blair. It took off at 8.30 AM from Tambaram air base and was due to land at Port Blair at 11.30 AM.

The plane made its last contact with the Chennai air traffic controller at 8.46 AM when it was about 280 km east of Chennai. The distance between Chennai and Port Blair is about 1,390 km.

The transporter had six crew members – three officers, one air man and two technicians from the IAF. There were 23 other passengers in the 'courier flight' that include 11 from the IAF, 9 from the Navy, two from the Army and one from the Indian Coast Guard.

What made the search operations extremely challenging was the monsoon weather as the sea was rough with strong off-shore winds. Also later it was found that the aircraft didn’t carry an underwater locator beacon, which would have helped in the search operations.