No trace of missing aircraft, search op by Navy continues

JAMSHEDPUR, Aug 23: The trainer aircraft that went missing after taking off from Jharkhand’s Jamshedpur on August 20 is yet to be found, as search operations are on for it in a dam for the fourth day on Friday, officials said.
Bodies of the trainee pilot and his instructor, who were on board the two-seater aircraft, were found in the Chandil dam on Thursday.“The missing Cessna-152 aircraft is still traceless,” Sub-Divisional Magistrate of Chandil Subhra Rani told mediapersons here.
An Indian Navy team, that began its search on Thursday, continued the operation on Friday but without success. “A 19-member team of the Indian Navy, which came from Visakhapatnam following a request from the Seraikela-Kharswan district administration, has resumed the search operation to locate the missing trainer aircraft. We had to call off the search operation at 6 pm yesterday due to inclement weather,” the official said.On the first day, the local authorities and the forest department searched for the aircraft, while an NDRF team was assigned the task on August 21.
Following a request by the Seraikela-Kharswan district authorities, a Navy team came from Visakhapatnam and started looking for the missing aircraft, owned by Alchemist Aviation Pvt Ltd, under the water of Chandil dam’s reservoir.
The company’s General Manager Rabi Bhushan Pathak said the Navy personnel have marked a specific area in the dam to conduct the search operation but there has been no success so far.
Officials said the bodies of trainee pilot Shubhrodeep Dutta and pilot-in-command Captain Jeet Satru Anand were handed over to their families after a post-mortem examination was conducted.Dutta was a resident of Adityapur near Jamshedpur.Pathak said the body of Captain Satru was taken to Patna by family members for last rites there.
The aircraft went missing shortly after taking off from the Sonari aerodrome on Tuesday. Villagers had claimed that the aircraft crashed into the water body.Alchemist Aviation in a statement said it was too early to comment about the reasons for the crash.“The aircraft had 80 litres of fuel in it with an endurance of 4 hours 30 minutes, and the flying time was scheduled to be 1 hour,” it said.The plane lost contact with the Jamshedpur Air Traffic Control Tower around 11.10 am on Tuesday. (PTI)