Pilot error caused C130-J crash

New Delhi: Error in piloting is understood to have been found as the reason behind the crash of Air Force’s C-130J Super Hercules aircraft in March in which five service personnel, including four officers, were killed near Gwalior.

The Court of Inquiry is almost complete and error in piloting is believed to have been the reason behind the crash, highly placed IAF sources said.

The aircraft, worth over Rs 900 crore, had crashed while practicing a tactical operation along with another C-130J Super Hercules aircraft after taking off from Agra on March 28.

Read: IAF's C-130J Super Hercules plane crashes near Gwalior, 5 crew members killed

All the crew on board — four officers and one Warrant Officer — lost their lives in the mishap.

The IAF Court of Inquiry under an officer of the rank of Air Commodore (equivalent to a Brigadier in Army) is in the final stages and the report will be soon submitted to the Defence Ministry, IAF spokesperson Group Captain Gerard Galway said.

India recently inducted six C-130J Super Hercules aircraft which were bought from the US at a cost of around Rs 6,000 crore (USD 1 billion) four years ago.

The inquiry was held back for some time in the early stages as the black box of the aircraft had suffered damage and had to be sent to the original equipment manufacturer Lockheed Martin Corporation’s facility in the US.

The home base of the 77 squadron ‘Veiled Vipers’ operating the ill-fated aircraft is Hindan in Ghaziabad near here. The aircraft has recently landed at Ladakh’s Daulat Beg Oldie air field near the Sino-India border and have helped in boosting IAF’s capability to airlift troops closer to the border in times of emergency.

IAF has also placed orders for another six such aircraft, which are planned to be deployed in Panagarh, West Bengal, near the headquarters of Indian Army’s 17 Strike Corp being raised to counter the threat along the border with China.

via Deccan Chronicle

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Regular loss of strategic military assets a cause for worry

The Indian Air Force may never have a credible explanation why one of the world’s safest aircraft, with four engines and unusual agility, crashed on Friday near Chambal river. The crash, however, should raise questions over India losing its strategic assets at such alarming frequency.

At least some quarters in the security and intelligence establishments have sat up to take note. However, even they have no credible evidence to show if there has been any effort at sabotage. There is no data either to show that these developments were pure accidents, or slippage of professionalism, or a combination of all these factors. What is irrefutable is the frequency of these incidents.

It is an unusual frequency, as far as damages to strategic assets are concerned. On August 14, 2013 INS Sindhurakshak witnessed explosions that led to fire and the submarine sank in Mumbai. Questions still linger over what really happened aboard the Russian Kilo class submarine early that morning, in which 18 personnel were killed. The cause of the disaster may never be exactly known, even if the salvage operation is successful.

Whether it was a pure accident or it was because of mishandling of ammunition, or if there was something sinister may never be known. But it is almost certain that the Russian submarine is lost to Navy forever. Worth over a thousand crores, the loss of the submarine further strains India’s underwater capability.

Six months later, fire broke out aboard INS Sindhuratna on February 26 this year, killing two officers and injuring several others. In this case, the Navy may have a more cogent explanation about what may happened on board the submarine.

With Friday’s crash of the C-130J aircraft, a pattern seems to be emerging: Of almost improbable accidents taking place at regular intervals on strategic assets that are not easy to replace in the short run and expensive by all counts. Most importantly, with each of these accidents, the Indian military is losing some of its finest men, and also its track record as a safe modern military.

The developments of recent times raise several uncomfortable questions for which there is no definite answer, but asking them now would be vital to ensure that this frequency of accidents do not carry on.

The foremost question would be if there is a slippage in the professional standards of military, and these minor slippages are contributing to the accidents. This is a touchy issue to raise, but many are beginning to admit that there may be a need for the military top brass to take a hard look at their practices, and professional standards.

The second, and most crucial, question is if these professional shortages are being exploited by someone. What if an inimical force were strategically targeting India’s cutting edge assets, and capabilities? The question borders on the absurd, but many within the military and larger security establishment were asking those questions today as the four-engine, agile, very reliable C-130J crashed.
via IDRW

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Crashed Indian Air Force plane's crew family lament over authorities apathy

Family of Squadron leader of Indian Air Force (IAF), Ashish Yadav, who was killed in the cargo plane crash, resented no response from the Air Force authorities post incident, in Kanpur.

"After the accident, nobody has come, either from the Indian Air Force or either someone from any administration or authority or a people's representative. It is very unfortunate that our brave hearts sacrifice their lives for the nation but there is no one who has the time, even the Air Force officers, to come visit the victim's family and be with them in their hard times to console them," said a relative, Shyam Singh Yadav on Saturday (March 29).

An Indian Air Force cargo plane crashed on Friday, killing its crew of five, in the latest of a string of accidents to spotlight poor safety standards across the country's armed services.

Yadav was a Squadron leader at the Hindon Air Base in Agra. Both his father and father-in-law have served in the Indian Air Force as well.

Last month, India's navy chief resigned, taking moral responsibility for a series of accidents, on the same day that two officers were killed by smoke in a submarine.

In Friday's crash, a U.S.-made C-130J Hercules aircraft came down in a desolate area of the Madhya Pradesh while on a routine training mission.

All five crew members on board were killed, Air Force spokesman Capt Gerard Galway said. The defence ministry said it had ordered an investigation into the cause of the accident.

The aircraft, made by Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N), was one of six bought for the air force at a cost of $962 million in 2011.

It crashed to the west of Gwalior after taking off at 10 a.m. from Agra, home of the famed Taj Mahal monument.

It was the first crash of a Hercules aircraft of the Indian Air Force, which has been plagued for years by the crashes of its Russian-made MiG-21 fighters.

More than half the MiG fleet of 872 aircraft has been lost to crashes that killed 171 pilots, Defence Minister A.K. Antony told parliament in 2012.

via Business Standard

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Crocodiles kept eating dead IAF officers' bodies

Kanakpura, where the C-130J Super Hercules Special Operations transport aircraft crashed, is a swamp left of a partially dried up river infested with crocodiles that nestle here.

Moments after the plane crashed near the remains of the waterbody, crocodiles walked up to the body parts strewn across the area and started feeding
on them. "We have been informed of the crocodiles eating up the bodies of at least two crew members on board the Hercules, but it hasn't been confirmed yet," an official with the defence ministry said.

The villagers had rushed to the spot on hearing the deafening sound of crash in their vicinity when they spotted the debris of the huge plane.

via DNA

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5 officers killed as IAF’s new showpiece Super Hercules crashes near Gwalior

Manu Pubby. 

In A shocking loss for the air force, one of its most modern special operations C-130 J aircraft crashed Friday during a low-level, tactical training mission, killing all five crew and destroying the plane.

The aircraft, inducted in 2010, was commanded by Wing Commander Prashant Joshi, an experienced pilot and the second-in-command of the 77 ‘Veiled Vipers’ squadron. It had three other pilots on board, including one who was undergoing training.

Sources said the C-130 J was part of a two aircraft formation that had taken off from Agra and was to carry out low-level flying training before returning to base. Official and eyewitness accounts said the aircraft apparently grazed a hillock before crashing in a riverbed site 116 km west of Gwalior on the Rajasthan-Madhya Pradesh border.

“The aircraft, numbered KC 3803, was the number two of the formation and was carrying out a tactical flying training mission. The loss of the aircraft was ascertained by the lead aircraft and rescue choppers were sent from Gwalior,” an air force officer told The Indian Express.

What has come as a surprise is that the aircraft was believed to be in good technical condition and did not give out any distress signal before going down. “The crash was sudden and there was no indication from the crew that anything was wrong,” the officer said.

While a court of inquiry that has been ordered will rely on flight data information from its black box as well as the account of the lead aircraft of the formation, the investigation is expected to focus on a controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) situation or a sudden loss of control due to a technical or human error, among others.

Accounts from the ground said the aircraft was observed to be flying low and hitting a small hillock before disintegrating and catching fire on a river bed. Local villagers were the first to reach the site and recovered the bodies of the crew who were thrown out of the aircraft after it disintegrated on impact.

The crew has been identified by the air force as Wing Commander Prashant Joshi (Pilot), Wing Commander Raji Nair (Co-pilot), Squadron Leader Kaushik Mishra (Pilot undergoing training), Squadron Leader Ashish Yadav (Navigator) and Warrant Officer KP Singh (Systems Operator).

“Events like these are painful reminders of the inherent risks which our brave air warriors face in the execution of our daily mission,” Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha said, adding that “the best pilots have been chosen to fly these aircraft”.

“The C-130J is a modern aircraft which was inducted into the IAF in 2010. In the last three years of its operations we have exploited capabilities of this aircraft during Uttarakhand floods and landing at DBO, which is the highest landing ground in the world,” he said.

India has six C-130 J ‘Super Hercules’ aircraft that were inducted starting 2010. The cost of the fleet was $962 million and India is processing an order of six more such aircraft.

via The Indian Express

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