AN-32 search Day 4: The missing Indian Air Force Antonov AN-32 aircraft which went off radar on Monday is said to have had an outdated beacon or signal emitter (Sabre-8 ELT), reports and social media said. The outdated signal emitter with its limited battery life and adverse weather conditions are playing the spoilsport in search and rescue operations of the ill-fated military transport aircraft, reports said. Ukrainian manufacturer Ukrspecexport Corp had stopped manufacturing the Sabre-8 ELT since 2004. If we consider the two handicaps, to locate the missing plane is like searching for a needle in a haystack as the search mission for Indian Air Force AN-32 aircraft enters the fourth day.
The Soviet-origin AN 32 aircraft are vital to maintaining and supplying troops located in the Eastern and Northern borders but it is still not known if the missing AN-32 aircraft did have the Sabre-8 ELT signal emitter (The IAF hasn’t issued an official statement in this regard yet).
There were 13 Indian Air Force (IAF) personnel, eight crew and five passengers, on board the ill-fated AN-32 military transport aircraft. Here are the names of the missing Indian IAF personnel as per reports and social media:
1. Flight Lieutenant M Garg
2. Wing Commander Charles
3. Flight Lieutenant Mohanty
4. Flight Lieutenant Tanwar
5. S/L Vinod
6. Flight Lieutenant Thapa
7. Sergent Anoop
8. Captain Sharin
9. WO KK Mishra
10. LAC Pankaj
11. LAC SK Singh
12. NC(E) Rajesh Kumar
13. NC(E) Putali
– IAF pilot Ashish Tanwar, who was flying the AN-32, is still missing. Tanwar’s wife Sandhya was monitoring the Indian Air Force (IAF) Air Traffic Control (ATC) at 12:25 pm when her husband’s AN-32 took off from Jorhat in Assam on June 3, 2019. His family has sought government help to trace their son. His mother has requested the Ministry of Home Affairs to look into the matter and launch an investigation.
– Airman Suraj Kumar Singh, a resident of Shobha Chhapara village in Bairia area of Uttar Pradesh’s Ballia, has been missing. The family and friends of Ballia airman Singh have been praying for his safe return.
Though a $400 million deal was signed with Ukraine in 2009 to modernise the ageing An-32 fleet, the mid-life upgradation of the aircraft was not fully complete, reports said. Since 2011, India started receiving several batches of the refurbished AN-32 aircraft but the last batch of 5-10 aircraft had not been upgraded as required by March 2014 due to several issues, then defence minister Manohar Parrikar had revealed.
On January 22, 2019, international defence website janes.com had reported that India and Ukraine had agreed to resume the upgrade for AN-32 transport aircraft after Kiev developed alternatives to replace the Russian-made systems. The retrofit of 65 AN-32s was likely to be carried out at the IAF’s base repair depot (BRD) in Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh. The upgrade would have extended the service life of the transporters from 25 to 40 years.
India had received 40 upgraded aircraft from Ukraine’s state-owned Ukrspecexport Corp after India and Ukraine signed deal to modernise the AN-32 fleet based on a 2009 agreement. India got the planes but it
didn’t get the required spare parts on a regular basis due to the Crimean Peninsula conflict and strife between Russia and Ukraine.
The father of Flight lieutenant Kunal Barpatte, the pilot of the AN-32 aircraft that went missing in July 2016 with 29 people onboard, had demanded that the government replace the “flawed” Russian-origin aircraft with better and safer planes.
