Chennai: Deepening the mystery behind the disappearance of the Indian Air Force (IAF)'s AN-32, the aircraft manufacturer, Antonov, has said the on-board emergency locator transmitter (ELT) may not have been activated because of two reasons - the aircraft hitting the surface without enough force or the pilot failing to switch the device on.
The transport aircraft, on a routine flight to Port Blair with 29 people on board, went missing 270km off the Chennai coast on July 22.
In response to a questionnaire from TOI, the Ukraine-based aircraft company said the aircraft had two ELTs - a stationary ARTEX C406-1 ELT manufactured by ACR Electronics/Artex Products, the US and a French-made portable KANNAD 406AS ELT manufactured by Orolia. "In an emergency, the pilot has to activate the ELT beacon manually. Probably, the pilot of the missing AN-32 did not switch it on. If longitudinal load factor (impact) was less than 2.3g, the stationary ELT would not have activated automatically. Radio waves are not transmitted in the water. There is no signal from ELT under water for this reason," Antonov press service spokesperson said in an e-mail from Ukraine.
Indian Coast Guard eastern region commander Rajan Bargotra had raised concerns over the absence of signals from ELT of the disappeared flight, the only limitation in the massive search operation over the Bay of Bengal code named as 'Operation Talash'. "The limitation is that we are unable to get any signal from the ELT beacon. Had that transmission been available, the search would have been much easier for us. It happened so in a couple of aircraft accidents, which have happened over sea. In none of them, the ELT was operating, like in the case of the ICG Dornier in June 2015," he had told reporters recently.
30/07/16 Yogesh Kabirdoss/Times of India
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The transport aircraft, on a routine flight to Port Blair with 29 people on board, went missing 270km off the Chennai coast on July 22.
In response to a questionnaire from TOI, the Ukraine-based aircraft company said the aircraft had two ELTs - a stationary ARTEX C406-1 ELT manufactured by ACR Electronics/Artex Products, the US and a French-made portable KANNAD 406AS ELT manufactured by Orolia. "In an emergency, the pilot has to activate the ELT beacon manually. Probably, the pilot of the missing AN-32 did not switch it on. If longitudinal load factor (impact) was less than 2.3g, the stationary ELT would not have activated automatically. Radio waves are not transmitted in the water. There is no signal from ELT under water for this reason," Antonov press service spokesperson said in an e-mail from Ukraine.
Indian Coast Guard eastern region commander Rajan Bargotra had raised concerns over the absence of signals from ELT of the disappeared flight, the only limitation in the massive search operation over the Bay of Bengal code named as 'Operation Talash'. "The limitation is that we are unable to get any signal from the ELT beacon. Had that transmission been available, the search would have been much easier for us. It happened so in a couple of aircraft accidents, which have happened over sea. In none of them, the ELT was operating, like in the case of the ICG Dornier in June 2015," he had told reporters recently.
30/07/16 Yogesh Kabirdoss/Times of India
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