IAF begins operations to spot missing helicopter

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The Indian Air Force on Sunday resumed search operations to locate the missing helicopter carrying Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu.

"Two MI-17 and two Cheetah helicopters have been pressed into service to locate the wreckage of the missing helicopter," Ranjeeb Sahoo, IAF spokesman at the Eastern Air Command headquarters in Shillong said.

The aerial rescue and search operations resumed at 6 a.m. on Sunday. On Saturday, the IAF suspended its aerial operations due to inclement weather.

"The rescue teams are also likely to cover Bhutan air space bordering Arunachal to trace the missing chopper," Sahoo said.

The Indian government is in constant touch with Bhutan to find out about the missing chopper.

The Pawan Hans AS350 B-3 helicopter carrying the chief minister and four others went missing after it took off from Tawang at 9.50 a.m. on Saturday. The last radio contact with the ground was about 20 minutes after take off as it flew over the Sela Pass along the Chinese border perched at an altitude of 13,700 feet.

"We have not been able to contact our pilots," a Pawan Hans official said in Guwahati.

Apart from Khandu, the people on board included crew members Captain J.S. Babbar and Captain K.S. Malick, Khandu's security officer Yeshi Choddak and Yeshi Lamu, sister of Tawang legislator Tsewang Dhondup.

Two central ministers, Mukul Wasnik and V. Narayanswamy, are arriving Itanagar on Sunday to oversee the search operations under express orders from the prime minister.

The helicopter in question, AS350 B-3, is a single-engine chopper. In case of an engine failure, there are very slim chances of the helicopter making a safe landing.

The incident comes just days after another Pawan Hans helicopter crashed in Tawang April 19, killing 17 people and injuring six.

The Pawan Hans Helicopter Services Limited (PHHL) has been operating five helicopters across Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura and daily Guwahati-Tawang services for the past nine years. It is one of the major lifelines of the landlocked Arunachal Pradesh.