Indian Air Force AN-32 still missing with 29 people on board

An Indian Air Force AN-32 aircraft has been missing now for over 30 hours and, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar has arrived at Chennai to join a sortie conducted by the armed forces. The missing aircraft was on a "courier flight" with 29 people on board and had gone missing 16 minutes after takeoff from Tambaram Air Base.
This has been reported in ndtv.com dated 23 July 2016.

The search and rescue operations has being undertaken by the Navy, Air Force and the Coast Guard to locate the whereabouts of the AN-32 that had left the Tambaram air base near Chennai en-route to Port Blair - however, ground control lost contact with it after 16 minutes when the pilot reported that "everything is normal".
The aircraft had six crew members and eight civilians (family members) and it is feared that it might have plunged rapidly from an altitude of 23,000 feet. There were 11 Air Force personnel, one Navy and two Army soldiers and a coast guard member on the transport plane that was headed to Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar chain of islands.
More than 12 Navy and coast guard ships are searching for the aircraft in the Bay of Bengal and a submarine has also been diverted for the search. The search operation continued through the night. The plane is fitted with an emergency beacon locator which gets activated in the event of a crash. The Navy submarine is expected to track underwater signals from the locator.


Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org

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Antonov An-225 Mriya is the world's largest cargo aircraft and it landed at the Rajiv Gandhi International airport, Hyderabad. It is a wide bodied aircraft powered by six turbofan engines and is the longest and heaviest airplane ever built apart from having the largest wingspan of any aircraft in operational service. It boasts of a maximum takeoff weight of 640 tonnes.
This has been reported in timesofindia.indiatimes.com dated 13 May 2016.

Antonov An-225 has been specially built to undertake transcontinental route airlifting load between 180 to 230 tonnes. The aircraft has landed at Hyderabad after take off from Turkmenistan.
Incidentally, Reliance Defence had recently signed a strategic partnership agreement with Antonov company of Ukraine. As per this agreement, the Indian firm will undertake assembly, manufacture and MRO of Antonov platforms in India, both for the commercial and the military market. The JV will address various requirements including 50-80 seat passenger aircraft program of the HAL, in its basic configuration and in all its variants such as transport, maritime patrol and other military roles.
The AN class of aircraft has long served the Indian Air Force and Navy for over five decades. At present, the IAF has more than 100 AN-32 aircraft in its inventory - these have completed its last life cycle upgrade and will soon be due for replacements.


Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org

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