YSR's Copter Crash: The Inside Story

Even days after the crash, the ELT on the CM's chopper remains missing. Why? Because the locals may have just walked away with it as a souvenir, this even as the forces were busy clicking pictures of themselves in front of the mangled chopper. The crash site had become a tourist spot.
The government did not even follow the very basic rules of crash site investigations, failing to cordon off the site, allowing 'souvenir hunters' a free run and trampling over hundreds of pieces of helicopter debris that was strewn over a 500 meter radius.
The chief minister's helicopter had crashed in the most inaccessible of places - and yet even as the elite Greyhounds looked on, the crash site became a tourist spot.
After airlifting the bodies - the government had virtually abandoned the site, even as the Greyhounds and the CRPF men lounged around - local villagers and tribals walked all over the crash site. Picking up stuff and kicking pieces of metal. Far from cordoning off the area - people were allowed to pick up pieces of the helicopter and walk away.
More than twenty hour hours after the crash, there was the reeking smell of Aviation Fuel and burnt human skin. It was as if the helicopter had rammed into the hill at full speed - then rolled upwards - before exploding in a fireball. YSR would have had very little or no time to react. With two hours worth of fuel in its tanks - the Bell 430 must have created quite an explosion in the remote jungles of Nallamala.
That's why the Emergency Location Transmitter (or ELT) might not have worked - the force of the impact and the ensuing fire may have reduced it to a heap of metal and as for the Cockpit Voice Recorder (or CVR) not much will come from it.
Even if the CVR has not been damaged with people walking over it - it will only replay the voice of the pilot and not the aeronautical data of the helicopter (like a full fledged black box that stores data like speed - altitude - engine performance) Going by the way the helicopter slammed into the hill - even the pilot might not have had time to realise that he was flying so low.
07/09/09 About Akash Banerjee/India Today

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Sep 2009, Safety Sep 2009