Chennai: Search for missing Dornier aircraft enters fifth day

The search for the missing Dornier aircraft of the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) entered its fifth day on Saturday.

Intense and sustained efforts to search and locate the missing ICG aircraft are continuing round the clock by ships of the ICG and the Indian Navy in areas of probability for the last 96 hours.

Twelve Coast Guard and Naval ships along with patrol boats of the Coastal Security group are involved in the search.

In addition, Naval submarine INS Sindhudhwaj and survey ship INS Sandhayak equipped with Sound Navigation And Ranging (SONAR) will be joining the search operation, shortly, for assisting in the underwater search.

More than 60 hours of air search has been undertaken by the Coast Guard Dornier and the IN long range maritime reconnaissance aircraft P8I. The search area is also being re-appreciated after analysing the reports received from the search units.

Water samples from the area of oil patches reported by ICG Dornier has been sent for analysis. The search operation continues.