Indian Navy ALH, on a routine sortie off Mumbai, met with an accident close to the coast on Wednesday. Three personnel on board made an emergency landing, and were rescued by a naval patrol aircraft.
“Indian Navy ALH on a routine sortie off Mumbai ditched close to the coast. Immediate search and rescue ensured the safe recovery of the crew of three by a naval patrol craft,” the official said, adding that the three were brought to the Navy’s helicopter base INS Shikra and medically examined.
“Ditching” refers to an emergency landing on water. An inquiry to investigate the incident has been ordered, the official said.
The Navy said that the ALH experienced a sudden loss of power and rapid loss of height. “The ditched helicopter deployed its emergency flotation gear and efforts are underway to salvage it," the Navy stated.
Last year in October, a weaponised Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) of the Army had crashed in Arunachal Pradesh, killing all five personnel onboard.
After the deadly crash, all ALH in service in the country, just over 300, were grounded for safety checks as a precaution. “We are putting all of them under a one-time check and they will be flying post that,” an official source had said last year. It is purely a precautionary move and done in case of a major crash, another source had said.
Before that, a Cheetah helicopter of the Indian Army had crashed in Kashmir’s Gurez sector, killing one of its pilots. The Army said in a statement that the helicopter “crashed in Baraub area of Gurez in Bandipora district this afternoon, while on a routine mission to evacuate an ailing soldier from a forward post”.
Earlier this year, the pilot of a trainer aircraft was killed after it crashed in Madhya Pradesh’s Rewa district, 400 km from state capital Bhopal.
The trainee pilot who was on board was injured in the incident that took place around 11.30 pm on January 5, said an official. The aircraft crashed three km away from Chorhatta airstrip after hitting the dome of a temple and a tree while on a training sortie, said Chorhatta police station in-charge J P Patel.
Captain Vimal Kumar (50), resident of Patna, was killed in the crash while trainee pilot Sonu Yadav (23), resident of Jaipur, suffered injuries and admitted to the government-run Sanjay Gandhi Medical College hospital, said Rewa collector Manoj Pushp.
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