- Thursday, February 27, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
THE Indian Air Force (IAF) has given a detailed inquiry report on the December 8 helicopter crash that resulted in the deaths of the country’s first chief of defence staff Bipin Rawat, his wife and 11 other military personnel in the southern state of Tamil Nadu to defence minister Rajnath Singh, sources said on Wednesday (5).
“IAF gave a detailed presentation for over 45 minutes to defence minister Rajnath Singh on the CDS chopper crash inquiry report. The tri-services probe report has given its findings on reasons behind the crash and made recommendations for the future chopper operations for flying VIPs,” the sources said.
Chief of the air staff air chief marshal Vivek Ram Chaudhari, defence Secretary Ajay Kumar and inquiry committee chief air marshal Manvendra Singh presented the report to Singh.
The tri-services inquiry team that worked on the report also made some recommendations for revising the standard operating procedures when helicopters carry senior defence officials, the sources added, according to Asian News International.
On the crash, the sources said the ill-fated Mi-17V5 aircraft was following a railway line in the hills when it suddenly faced a thick cloud cover. The chopper was reportedly flying at a low altitude and it emerged that the crew tried to fly out of the cloud cover than land and hit a cliff in the process, resulting in the fatal accident, they added.
The sources also said that since the entire crew in the helicopter was ‘master green’ category, they were confident about wriggling out of the situation as there was no distress call made to the ground stations suggesting that there was an emergency.
According to the sources, the ‘master green’ category includes the best in transport aircraft and helicopter fleets of the three forces as they are capable of landing or taking off in low visibility.
One of the probe committee’s recommendations was that in future, the crew should be a mix of pilots from ‘master green’ and other categories so that if needed, they can seek help from the ground stations.
A number of other recommendations are also learnt to have been made by the committee which is headed by air marshal M Singh.
