MUMBAI: The four passengers who succumbed in the Pawan Hans helicopter accident on Tuesday were airlifted by the Indian Navy helicopters Seaking and ALH in a commendable rescue operation.
The naval helicopters were provided with the direction and the floating crews’ location by the Indian Coast Guard Dornier aircraft. Though it cannot fly low over the sea, the aircraft kept track of the passengers from a higher altitude guiding rescue.
Sanju Francis (30), Mukesh Kumar Patel (55), Satyambad Patra (27), and Vijay Mandloi (32) were airlifted around 1.46pm by the Indian Navy helicopters and taken to the Juhu airbase.
Indian Coast Guard spokesperson, Commandant RK Singh, said the entire team involved in the two-hour search-and-rescue operation fought challenging rough weather and rescued the nine crews after the ONGC helicopter ditched at sea.
“The search team—Indian Coast Guard and Indian Navy helicopters—managed to locate the crews after gathering information that the helicopter carrying two pilots and seven crews was on short-final landing procedures near the Sagar Kiran rig (around 60 nautical miles off the Mumbai coast) when it hit the sea,” said Singh.
What also helped with the rescue was the fact that the Pawan Hans helicopter was on short final when it made the emergency landing. Singh said the helicopter was less than 2km from its destination, the Sagar Kiran rig, when it ditched at sea. Had the helicopter been far away from the rig, the search-and-rescue area would have spread over a larger radius and would have taken longer. “The incident also gave the team the preparedness they have to carry out such an operation as the monsoon has just begun and this is the first major mishap,” Singh added.
He further said that the operation was completed faster after the Dornier aircraft flew at a height used to spot the crews and directed the helicopter that moved closer to the sea and airlifted the five and got them to Sagar Kiran rig from where they were airlifted by the ONGC. The last four rescued were airlifted from the sea by the Indian Navy and brought to the Juhu airbase from where they were shifted to hospital.
The ONGC is going to carry out a salvage operation to recover the black box in the ill-fated helicopter to know the reason for the crash.
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