Indian Navy team resumes search for missing trainer plane; bodies of pilot, instructor found

Jamshedpur, Aug 23 (PTI) An Indian Navy team on Friday resumed a search operation for the trainer aircraft that went missing after taking off from Jharkhand's Jamshedpur on August 20, an official said.

The search operation was called off at 6 pm on Thursday due to inclement weather, he said.

Bodies of the trainee pilot and his instructor, who were on board the two-seater aircraft, were found in the Chandil dam on Thursday.

"A 19-member team of the Indian Navy, which came from Visakhapatnam following a request from the Seraikela-Kharswan district administration, has resumed the search operation to locate the missing trainer aircraft. We had to call off the search operation at 6 pm yesterday due to inclement weather," the official said.

The trainer aircraft, a Cessna 152, belongs to a private aviation company.

The post-mortem examinations of the bodies of trainee pilot Shubhrodeep Dutta and pilot-in-command Captain Jeet Satru Anand will be conducted at Mahatma Gandhi Medical College and Hospital, Jamshedpur, the official said.

Dutta was a resident of Adityapur.

The aircraft went missing after taking off from the Sonari aerodrome on Tuesday, following which a search operation was launched in the nearby areas, including the reservoir of the dam.

Villagers had claimed that the aircraft crashed into the water body.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) along with the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), Directorate of Flying Training (DFT) and Directorate of Airworthiness (DAW) also started an investigation into the incident, another official said.

Alchemist Aviation, which owned and operated the aircraft registered as VT-TAJ, in a statement said it was too early to comment about the reasons for the crash.

"The aircraft had 80 litres of fuel in it with an endurance of 4 hours 30 minutes, and the flying time was scheduled to be 1 hour," it said.

The plane lost contact with the Jamshedpur Air Traffic Control Tower (ATC) around 11.10 am on Tuesday.

The aircraft was in an airworthy condition with an airworthiness certificate issued by DGCA and was fitted with an engine manufactured by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM), according to the statement.

Initially, the search operation was conducted along with local authorities and then with the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), the company said.

The Indian Navy was then called for help and it deployed a Sonic Navigation and Ranging (SONAR) device, which would assist in identifying the exact position of the incident, it said. PTI