Old Bell-430 was fit to fly

Hyderabad/New Delhi: Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy was left with no choice on Wednesday but to fly on the ageing Bell-430 helicopter while the new Augusta Westland 139 was grounded for inspection. The new helicopter was ready only at 10 am, while Dr Reddy had left around 8.35 am.
The recently-purchased AW has many advanced features but was lying at the hangar. "As per DGCA guidelines, the helicopter should be inspected for every 300 hours of flying," said AP Aviation Corporation managing director K.V. Brahmananda Reddy.
The DGCA was inspecting the helicopter and some spare parts were replaced following its directions. "It was ready to fly at 10 am," Mr Reddy said.
The government insisted that the Bell-430 helicopter was airworthy. "The helicopter is fully airworthy, the pilots are highly experi- enced and the airworthiness certificate issued by the DGCA is valid till December 5, 2010," Mr Brahmananda Reddy added.
In a status report, he said the "likelihood of the copter having carried out a safe landing at some inaccessible location is highly probable." Explaining the reasons for this, he said the craft was equipped with an emergency locator transmitter capable of automatic transmission of
frequency of 12.15 and 243 MHz, which would have activated in case of any crashlanding or such other unforeseen eventuality.
The state government had bought the Bell-430 in 1998 and had recently proposed exchanging it for a new one. This had been put on hold after the finance department had reservations on releasing Rs 40 crores due to financial constraints. "But the Bell helicopter was very much fit to fly," the official said.
In New Delhi, the DGCA sought to quash speculation that the Bell-430 helicopter had a troubled safety record, and sources noted it had got an airworthiness certificate as recently as June this year.
Speculation had been triggered by an earlier posting on the DGCA website which said the Andhra government had delayed renewing the airworthiness certificate. Later, however, DGCA sources said this was not so and the confusion was due to a delay in updating the website.
02/09/09 Asian Age

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