'Human error' behind Gen Bipin Rawat’s helicopter crash in 2021: IAF

New Delhi: The fatal helicopter crash that killed India’s first Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat and 11 others three years ago was caused by “human error”, the Indian Air Force (IAF) has informed a panel of lawmakers.

While deposing before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence, the IAF shared a list of 34 aircraft crashes between 2017-18 and 2021-22 along with the factors behind each of the accidents.

The reason behind the Mi-17V5 chopper crash on December 8, 2021, was given as human error by the aircrew, according to the House panel report.

In one of the country’s worst military tragedies, the IAF chopper ferrying Gen Rawat, his wife, seven Indian Army and five IAF personnel (all CDS staff) crashed in the Nilgiri forest near Ooty minutes before its scheduled touch down at the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington killing 13 of the 14 individuals on the spot.

The IAF in January 2022 said that the helicopter crashed because of its “entry into clouds due to unexpected change in weather conditions in the valley leading to spatial disorientation of the pilot”, releasing a brief summary of the Court of Inquiry report.

Such an entry into the cloud led to “spatial disorientation of the pilot resulting in Controlled Flight into Terrain".

The IAF officials identified human error behind 23 of the 34 crashes listed in the Parliamentary report while technical defect was the reason behind nine such crashes.

There were a couple of cases of foreign object damage and a lone case of a MiG-21 going down due to a bird strike. In some of the cases both human error and technical defects were responsible for the accident.

The IAF experienced 34 crashes including 21 fighter jets and seven helicopters in five years. The accident rate, however, declined from what it used to be at the turn of the millennium.

Briefing the panel, the officials said the IAF was deficient in trainer aircraft for which a contract was signed with Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, Bengaluru for the supply of 70 HTT-40 indigenous trainer aircraft. The delivery is to start from September 2025.

The IAF is deficient of 130 trainer aircraft as the force have only 238 such planes to take the rookie pilots to the sky as against the sanctioned strength of 368.

Once the first batch of HTT-40 aircraft is operationalised, the IAF plans to procure an additional 36 indigenous trainers, according to the Parliamentary Standing Committee report that was tabled on Tuesday.