In a harsh reminder of the unforgiving terrain the Indian Air Force (IAF) AN-32 transport aircraft operate in, one of these IAF workhorses crashed in Arunachal Pradesh on Monday. There were 13 military personnel on board.
The aircraft was flying from Jorhat, over high, densely forested mountains, to the advanced landing ground (ALG) at Mechuka, close to the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China. AN-32s carry supplies that sustain army troops on the LAC.
“No wreckage has been sighted so far. IAF is coordinating with Indian Army as well as various government and civil agencies to locate the missing aircraft,” stated the IAF.
The crash was an eerie echo of another one almost exactly a decade ago, when 13 personnel were killed in June 2009, when an AN-32 crashed soon after taking off from Mechuka.
In another incident that remains a mystery, an AN-32 with 29 personnel on board disappeared from radar screens on July 22, 2016, when flying from Chennai to Port Blair in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. No wreckage or bodies have ever been located.
Soon after the 2009 crash, the IAF signed a $400 million contract with Antonov, the Ukrainian firm that built the AN-32, for modernizing the 103 aircraft-strong fleet with improved avionics for flying in difficult conditions. The modernization was also intended to add ten years to the AN-32’s service life.
By 2014, 45 AN-32s were modernized in Ukraine, and then 10 more in the IAF base repair depot in Kanpur. But the programme then stalled when Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
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