Experts still unable to locate missing aircraft

Even with a fleet of naval ships, which confirmed the transmission from Sonar Locator Beacon (SLB) of missing Dornier aircraft, authorities failed to locate the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) flight on Sunday.

The plane went missing six days ago while doing a routine sortie. ICG sources here said the Naval Submarine INS Sindhudhvaj has arrived last night and commenced underwater search to confirm the transmission of 37.5 Khz from Sonar Locator Beacon (SLB) of the missing aircraft, as reported by INS Sandhayak.

Though the ICG said that the outcome of submarine search is expected by late evening, it has deployed another Coast Guard ship, Vigraha, with a National Institute of Oceanography (NIOT) team and a black box detector.

“The search probe will be lowered at sea for reception of the signal from the beacon of the aircraft,” the ICG in its official communication said.

A total of eight ships and aircrafts of ICG and the navy continue to search in the most probable area besides 124 hours have been flown by the ICG and naval aircraft towards search.

The National Remote Sensing Centre Hyderabad was requested to provide with the satellite imagery for analysis of the area for possible location of the aircraft.

They have intimated presence of cloud cover in the most probable area, precluding detection of any object on sea surface.

Second imagery by the microwave satellite is scheduled on Sunday. In addition to the ongoing massive search for the missing aircraft, a distress call from fishing boat Indra was promptly responded to by ICGS Abheek. Ten fishermen were rescued and safely brought to Puducherry harbour, ICG said. The “Dornier aircraft CG-791 deployed for surveillance along the Tamil Nadu coast and Palk Bay from the Coast Guard station, Chennai on Monday last evening failed to return to base.

This is the second incident involving Dornier aircraft that crashed into the sea during night flying in the past three months.

Earlier, a naval Dornier had crashed off Goa Coast on March 26, resulting in the death of two pilots, including a woman officer while the main pilot of aircraft was rescued.