The unexplained disappearance of Indian Air Force transport aircraft An-32 is akin to Coast Guards Dornier which went missing on 8th June, 2015 off Chennai coast last year. There were no distress calls from both the aircrafts which vanished suddenly from the radar. An-32 had 29 personnel on board who went missing on Friday morning. It is presumed the aircraft to have crashed into the Bay of Bengal while en route from Tambaram Air Base to Port Blair, the Headquarters of the Andaman and Nicobar Command, the country’s only tri-service command. Although a major search and rescue operation is in progress, it is unlikely that there would be any survivours keeping the monsoon and choppy sea in view. Although this is the 13th crash involving an An-32 aircraft, it is until now the largest loss involving the number of personnel missing-presumed-killed while travelling on any military aircraft. The incident raises vital questions pertaining to the health of the IAF fleet and security of its personnel. It particularly raises the issue of maintenance considering that the missing aircraft had encountered three snags pertaining to pressure leak, hydraulics and a sluggish throttle in the preceding 10 days. This was despite this aircraft having undergone a major overhaul and a mid-life extension. This versatile Soviet-origin An-32, which was inducted in 1984, continues to be the work horse of the IAF transporting supplies and troops to the remotest of areas ranging from the Siachen Glacier in Ladakh to make-shift advance landing grounds in Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur. But the aircraft has been periodically hit by maintenance and serviceability issues. The An-32 is not the IAF’s only aircraft facing this problem. Frontline fighter aircraft, including the upgraded MiG-21 Bison and the advanced Sukhoi-30 have been plagued by maintenance and serviceability issues. Prior to this accident, in March 1999, An-32 crashed in Palam Airport while landing claiming 22 lives. The government needs to urgently address these issues otherwise it will have adverse impact on defence preparedness.
