Indian Navy detects intermittent transmission from missing Coast Guard aircraft

The latest incident comes soon after a Dornier-228 of the Indian Navy went down in the Arabian Sea in March

An Indian Navy vessel has detected signals from the Coast Guard Dornier aircraft nearly five days after it went missing. Efforts have been on since to locate the missing aircraft in the area of probability. A multi-coloured sheen of oil in concentric circles has been sighted, indicating the seepage of oil. A sample of the oil has been sent to a laboratory for analysis.

INS Sandhyak,which is conducting sub-surface search, detected intermittent transmission of 37.5 Khz likely to be from the sonar locator beacon (SLB) of the missing aircraft, according to an official statement from the ministry of defence.

The transmission was detected near the area where the Air Traffic Control (ATC) radar had lost contact with the aircraft. INS Sindhudhvaj, a navy submarine, is likely to arrive in the area late in the evening to augment the sub-surface search. The National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) has also diverted its research vessel Sagar Nidhiand, it is likely to arrive in the area for underwater search by June 14.

Reliance India Limited has been approached for help in underwater operations with its multi support vessel (MSV) with a remotely operated underwater vehicle. A total of 10 navy and coast guard vessels and two aircraft are engaged in the search for the missing aircraft currently.

The Dornier went off the radar at 9.23 pm on Monday during a routine surveillance mission along the state coast and Palk Bay after it took off from the Chennai station. The last known location of the aircraft, as per the radar at Tiruchirapally, was off Karaikal in Puducherry, tracked about 95 nautical miles south of Chennai.

The crew included Deputy Commandant Vidyasagar piloting the aircraft, his co-pilot and Deputy Commandant Subash Suresh and navigator M K Soni, all in their 30s. The aircraft was the latest induction into the Coast Guard’s fleet in 2014 and was being flown by a highly experienced crew, according to a Coast Guard statement.

The latest incident comes within months of a Dornier-228 of the Indian Navy with three crew members going down in the Arabian Sea off Goa coast, killing two. The March crash was the first involving a Dornier which was inducted by the Navy in mid 90s.