New Delhi: With no sign of any wreckage from the Indian Air Force plane that disappeared on Friday with 29 people on board, the search area in the Bay of Bengal is being widened, said officials today.
With 17 ships, a submarine and 23 aircraft failing to detect debris on the surface of the sea, the entire operation now depends on picking up a signal from the elusive Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) fitted on to the AN-32 transport plane that was headed from Chennai to Port Blair when it disappeared without sending a distress signal.
Designed to start pinging a signal the moment it impacts water with a certain force, the ELT fitted on the Russian-built aircraft is likely to have a battery life of about a month - in other words, for a month, it will keep sending out a signal at a designated frequency which navy warships, submarines and coast guard vessels will be trying to pick up using their sonar systems.
But there is a real challenge here - the seas in this region go down to a depth of 3.5 kilometres, where immense oceanic pressure would mean the ELT, which is essentially a little box, stands a real threat of being crushed, particularly if it was damaged by the initial impact of a crash. The quality of signals from the ELT can also be affected if it lies partially buried under the wreckage of the aircraft.
25/07/16 Vishnu Som/NDTV
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With 17 ships, a submarine and 23 aircraft failing to detect debris on the surface of the sea, the entire operation now depends on picking up a signal from the elusive Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) fitted on to the AN-32 transport plane that was headed from Chennai to Port Blair when it disappeared without sending a distress signal.
Designed to start pinging a signal the moment it impacts water with a certain force, the ELT fitted on the Russian-built aircraft is likely to have a battery life of about a month - in other words, for a month, it will keep sending out a signal at a designated frequency which navy warships, submarines and coast guard vessels will be trying to pick up using their sonar systems.
But there is a real challenge here - the seas in this region go down to a depth of 3.5 kilometres, where immense oceanic pressure would mean the ELT, which is essentially a little box, stands a real threat of being crushed, particularly if it was damaged by the initial impact of a crash. The quality of signals from the ELT can also be affected if it lies partially buried under the wreckage of the aircraft.
25/07/16 Vishnu Som/NDTV
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