RIP Dorjee Khandu

[pemmaraju_s]

RIP.

[Rahul M]

We see that China has been trying to relieve the pressure from Pakistan after May2 and has absolved the PA from all mistakes.

But at the same time took pains to creat diversion for Indian establishment with the incident with CM of Arunachal pradesh.

It seems to be perfectly times to raise the alarm over India for a two front
when US is busy going after OBL and PA

propagating inane conspiracy theories, esp. those harmful to India is not appreciated.
user warned.

[Arihant]

We see that China has been trying to relieve the pressure from Pakistan after May2 and has absolved the PA from all mistakes.

But at the same time took pains to creat diversion for Indian establishment with the incident with CM of Arunachal pradesh.

It seems to be perfectly times to raise the alarm over India for a two front
when US is busy going after OBL and PA

propagating inane conspiracy theories, esp. those harmful to India is not appreciated.
user warned.

I'm not sure that the scenario that Acharya is trying to explore is inane. It is a plausible scenario (although unsubstantiated) - but I'm not sure exploring the scenario is necessarily harmful to Indian interests. Indeed, this is the kind of crowdsourced analysis that is key to the BRF value proposition.

[Rahul M]

when I need your opinion I will ask for it.
thank you.

[RamaY]

Telugu news paper Eenadu says 120 helicopters (out of 250) in India found unfit to fly in hilly regions by Yechuri Committee.

http://eenadu.net/panelhtml.asp?qrystr=htm/panel4.htm

[ramana]

Dear Sir, May you find peace in your new world. Even in your death you have served India.

[ramana]

Failure to locate heli crash site raises questions

The failure of Sukhoi-30, India’s multi-role military fighter aircraft for all weather and ISRO (India Space Research Organisation) in exact mapping of the crash site of Arunachal chief minister Dorjee Khandu’s helicopter in western Arunachal Pradesh raises security concerns about the state that shares border with China.

“If tomorrow the Chinese forces enter Arunachal Pradesh, how will our most potent aircraft hit the enemy positions correctly?” asked Bamang Tago, a state based RTI activist.

China has often claimed Arunachal Pradesh as its southern Tibet region.

Sukhoi-30 and ISRO’s mapping provided seven probable sites of the crash of the ill-fated helicopter. Two such sites were inside the territory of Bhutan. Naga GG in West Kameng district was identified as the most probable site.

But the wreckage of the helicopter carrying Khandu and four others, which went missing on Saturday, was found in Luguthang area in Tawang district on Wednesday. The place was not on the list of the probable sites.

A foot patrol party comprising village men finally located the wreckage of the helicopter and the bodies. Though the army and the Indo Tibetan Border Police Force are trained to move in mountainous terrain, both failed in covering the Luguthang area.

Gumjum Haider, secretary general of North East Students Organisation (NESO), said the failure of the IAF’s most advanced fighter aircraft Sukhoi, Army, ITBP and IRSO’s satellite services had exposed the true state of Indian security agencies.

“With such incapable forces, we are not safe. If tomorrow China attacks Arunchal Pradesh then we will be overrun by the Chinese army. The government of India will not do anything for the people here,” said Haider.

it might be good for the agencies to try to figure how & why they missed.

Also are there any reports of the place where they found the crash?

[ramana]

Clarification from Pawan Hans. Gives details
http://www.pawanhans.co.in/site/news95.aspx
Weather is generally foggy and rainy most of the year. I believe it lost its way and crashed into mountain side. I also think they follow visual approach and follow the road. Foggs can envalop the area suddenly even if Heli took off in clear weather.

The helicopter VT-PHT is a new helicopter and was deployed on wet lease for the State Govt of Arunachal Pradesh on 5th Dec 2010 to meet its long term requirements .
The VT-PHT is AS350 B 3 type of helicopter manufactured by Eurocopter, France. This helicopter is having latest technologies and has been introduced in our country for having excellent high altitude performance. The brand new helicopter was acquired in mid 2010. Till date helicopter has flown 306 hrs and done 577 landings. Most of the flying of this helicopter has been done in North East sector. The helicopter is equipped with necessary mission equipment like FADEC, automatic starting system, ELT, VHF, ADF, MARKER Receiver, ATC Transponder, Radio Altimeter, Vehicle & Engine Multifunction Display (VEMD) with First Limit Indicator (FLI) etc.
The helicopter is fitted with latest Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) operating on twin frequencies 243.0 MHZ and 406 MHZ. ELT transmits signal on heavy impact which can be picked by ISRO Satellite and any over flying aircraft. This equipment is basically to locate the helicopter in case of mishap.
The helicopter is maintained as per the maintenance programme recommended by the manufacturer and approved by the regulatory authority, DGCA. Since the inception of helicopter in service, all maintenance checks like daily inspection, 50 hrs inspection and 100 hrs inspection were carried out as per the Page 2 of 3 stipulated programme by trained and qualified engineers. The last 100 hrs mandatory inspection was carried out on 10th April, 2011at 267 hrs.
The regulatory authority, DGCA has been satisfied with the maintenance programme and had issued certificate of airworthiness of this helicopter on 21st July 2010 which is valid up to 20th July 2015. During the various surveillance and audit checks of DGCA, no discrepancies were found in respect of maintenance of this helicopter.
.......
Sanjeev Razdan
Dy General Manager (Engg)
[email protected]

This is nice but did the EML beacon emit any signals? If this chopper had all those bells and whistles did they work if not why not?

Were there any overhead flights in the area of the crash. Maybe the beacon did not emit its signals?

[Altair]

^^
Even if we hesitate to believe the official statements from Pawan hans, the Pilots always check their birds before flying. Its old school. everybody does that. There is a protocol which must be followed. These protocols are not school prayers. You follow it by book.There is a complete system check completed 2 hours before flying.

it might be good for the agencies to try to figure how & why they missed.

Its just like YSR case. helicopter deviated from its course and did not inform the ATC. There are too many conflicting versions but the version which sticks out is it was not following protocol. These protocols were set up considering every possible scenario inflight. Now I am puzzled why would two pilots carrying CM's not follow protocol? Please do not suggest they are incompetent!

Now I am not suggesting any inane khanspeeracey theories. All I am saying is our system of checking the helis is not working or/and our protocols both preflight and inflight are ineffective.

I heard in some fiction of Tom Clancy type novels where a helicopter is fooled to believe that it was flying in the correct path but it deviated. Its like placing a magnet next to a compass, something like that. I cant remember but its technically possible. Losing two CM's in two years is rather weird.

[ramana]

here is a set of Telegraph reports on the missing helicopter;



Search Results for Telegraph site


Three bodies sighted

North East Echoes

The flying coffins

A pall of gloom hangs over Arunachal Pradesh. Chief minister Dorjee Khandu, a promising leader dear to his people, is no more. Yet again, Pawan Hans, which is serving the people of the Northeast with its helicopter service, has failed its customers.

In a region that is far-flung and difficult to traverse by road, helicopter services are the only means of making it from one part of the state to another. This is true particularly of Arunachal Pradesh, which measures 83,743 square km and whose only connection between its eastern and western side is via Assam, by a long winding road that never seems to end. If you want to make it to Tawang from Itanagar within the shortest possible time you have to take a chopper across the rough and treacherous terrain.

Tawang, the district headquarters of West Kameng district, is 580km from Itanagar, the state capital. This is more than half the distance between Guwahati and Calcutta.

In a sense, road communication between the eastern and western region of Arunachal Pradesh is very basic in some places, poor at others and or non-existent in several places.

Since the state has a population density of 13 persons per square km, the lowest in the country, villages with small population are widely scattered making this the most difficult state to administer. Dorjee Khandu was from the Monpa tribe of Kameng district and represented Mukto constituency in West Kameng.


Sudden demise

Khandu’s 21-year career came to a grinding halt when the helicopter he was flying en route to Itanagar from Tawang suddenly disappeared from the radar on April 30. Until May 3, the entire population of Arunachal was hoping against hope that a miracle would happen and they would somehow see their smiling chief minister being rescued from the deep jungles. But that hope was wrecked when on May 4 villagers finally located the charred chopper and the bodies.

Ironically, it was a relative of Khandu, a panchayat leader within his constituency, and others with him who found the wreckage and identified the late chief minister’s body.

While the people of Arunachal are grateful for the search operation involving several battalions of the army, police, BSF and ITBP with assistance from the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), the question they pose has ominous undertones.

They are asking why India, which lays claim to superpower status, does not have state-of-the-art technology to beat the so-called difficult terrain. It did not help matters when around the same time our eyes were glued to the “Kill Osama” mission of the US and its true to precision, swish operation. Indeed it made us and the people of Arunachal Pradesh in particular feel so inadequate.

Repeated excuses trotted out about the difficult terrain, unfavourable weather and visibility problems seemed trite and unconvincing. The normally mild-mannered people of Arunachal Pradesh had lost their patience by the fifth day.

A friend and leading activist from Arunachal Pradesh sent this message: “In the most high profile tragedy in Arunachal Pradesh till date, as commoners we did not see any impressive physical preparedness in case of any defence eventualities in this border state. And as fellow citizens in this remote state, the emotional tribals kept waiting for a word of solace and concern from the Union government.”

The message stops there but raises several issues. The less restrained among the youth were vociferous in their condemnation of the entire search operations and wondered aloud whether China from across the border would have been able to do a better job. This will always be the ambivalence of borderlines, which are also the fault lines of India.


Mental gap

This recent bitter experience also exposed the huge mental distance and emotional disconnect between Delhi and the Northeast. In all of the five days that the people of Arunachal Pradesh kept their tears in check, they expected some of the Congress bigwigs like the Prime Minister, the Union home minister and above all, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi to visit them in their hour of trial. That never happened. However, the PM and Sonia Gandhi attended Khandu’s funeral, perhaps to assuage the hurt feeling of the people of this hill state.

Coming to the flying coffins, which is what Pawan Hans is now known as, it is unbelievable how the company is handling every crash. There is denial about the air-worthiness of the choppers and at times a defiant nonchalance.

When the Meghalaya crash happened in September 2004 and several political bigwigs lost their lives, the Meghalaya government directed Pawan Hans to replenish its fleet with more airworthy choppers but this was not taken seriously. Still, people continued to patronise the service for want of alternatives. You could reach Tura in one hour by chopper or it could take you 8-10 hours on the road.

During the Garo-Rabha clashes when road blockades were called on the Paikan-Bajengdoba stretch, the Pawan Hans chopper, rickety as it is and with vapour falling from the roof on to the passenger heads, did several sorties every day. Thank heavens nothing happened!

In April this year, one chopper crashed in Tawang. Then, too, there was no attempt to investigate the cause of the crash. What’s worse is that the single engine four-seater Eurocopter, which carried Khandu did not have a working emergency locating transmitter (ELT). Every helicopter is expected to have an ELT fitted to the body of the aircraft while the pilot is expected to carry a personal recovery beacon (PRB).

Normally the ELT would start giving distress signals in the event of a crash and the PRB, once activated, would start beaming the global positioning system (GPS) and the latitude and longitude details. This would have helped authorities pinpoint the location of the chopper, if it had crashed or force-landed in an interior place.

A similar thing happened in the helicopter crash which killed Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y.S.R. Reddy.


Need to rethink

Since April 30 when the chopper went missing, experts were counting on the ELT to locate the crash site but the Isro satellite could not pick up any signal. While some accounts say that the ELT was destroyed in the impact of the crash others maintain that it was perhaps not functioning at all. These issues need to be investigated and we need to know the findings.

Too often after a crash and a tearful farewell to the departed souls we tend to go back to “business as usual”. That’s how Pawan Hans has been able to play around with our lives and of course with the lives of its own pilots.

Many wonder why the Arunachal chief minister took the risk of flying on a single-engine chopper. We will never know why and whether he was aware of the circumstances. Politicians with their tight schedules often coerce pilots to take off even in inclement weather. But the point is whether pilots should put their lives on the line and that of other passengers as well. If there are rules, blue books or standard operational procedures they should be followed. They cannot be applied in the breach.

Incidentally, air force choppers also operate in similar weather conditions in the Northeast. Why are they able to make safe landings?

(The writer can be contacted at [email protected])

and

Patch Trail in Hunt for CM

Patch trail in hunt for CM
OUR CORRESPONDENT
Guwahati, May 2: Search operations for Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Dorjee Khandu’s helicopter that went missing on Saturday morning are likely to be confined mostly to West Kameng from tomorrow following the detection of “white and metallic patches” at a couple of locations in the district.

“The chopper remains traceless till now. Search by Sukhois and Isro images have revealed some objects in West Kameng’s Nagar GG and Bongajan areas, near the Sela Pass. We will now be concentrating our operations in and around this district. Choppers for search operations in West Kameng today could be sent only from the air base in Tawang because of inclement weather in Tezpur and Itanagar,” Arunachal Congress president and senior minister Nabam Tuki said this evening.

Lok Sabha MP Takam Sanjoy, who is co-ordinating the search operations in Tawang and West Kameng, said: “The focus of the search will be on areas in West Kameng (bordering Bhutan) where white and metallic patches have been detected by Sukhois and Isro.”

These locations include Mobi village, east of Sela and around 35km from Tawang, Zinda Pahar, the Eagle Nest sanctuary and Nagar GG, sources said.

Additional police personnel led by deputy inspector-general Anil Shukla were sent to West Kameng today to assist the search operations following “technical inputs” and “human intelligence”, the sources said. The crisis management group, which is meeting twice daily, is monitoring the situation.

Besides aerial search involving Sukhois, MI17 and Pawan Hans choppers, a massive search operation on the ground involving army, paramilitary forces and National Disaster Response Force personnel was carried out in West and East Kameng, Tawang and neighbouring areas over the past two days.

The deputy commissioners and superintendents of police of the state’s 16 districts were asked to conduct search operations after the chopper disappeared just 20 minutes after takeoff near Sela Pass in West Kameng.

I think Pawan Hans incompetence could lead to serious problems for India. Can anyone sue Pawan Hans for the non working ELT?

Also all those spurious signals aka "technial inputs" could be from prevous crashes?

I think as first step Pawan Hans needs to get twin engine helicopters for its North East operations. Immediate step needed.

Also need to send a IAF helicopter branch officer to take charge of the company if its not already done.

[Altair]

I think Pawan Hans incompetence could lead to serious problems for India. Can anyone sue Pawan Hans for the non working ELT?

Also all those spurious signals aka "technial inputs" could be from prevous crashes?

I think as first step Pawan Hans needs to get twin engine helicopters for its North East operations. Immediate step needed.

Also need to send a IAF helicopter branch officer to take charge of the company if its not already done.

ISRO and IAF follow a standard search pattern. They have the flight path and search 10 KM wide corridor and expand another 10 KM. Now if they did not find the chopper in that corridor there must be a reason. ELT is mandatory to all choppers. I cannot believe that it was non-functional. No pilot would risk flying in that terrible terrain without a functioning ELT. Did he atleast inform the ATC that they did not have one?
Pathetic state of affairs. AP CM Kiran Kumar Reddy is traveling in trains after what happened to Khandu. Everybody is $hit scared.