Comments
Pawan Hans commercial helicopter services in the North-East have been suspended following chopper crash last Saturday in which the former Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Mr Dorjee Khandu and four others died.
The flights of Asia's largest helicopter company were not operating since Sunday as the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) was undertaking checks and reviewing its choppers operating in the region, sources in the Pawan Hans Helicopters Ltd (PHHL) said today.
The DGCA would also examine why the advanced emergency locator transmitter (ELT) fitted into Mr Khandu's helicopter did not transmit signals on heavy impact during the crash, they said.
The signals of the ELT, fitted for locating a chopper in case of a mishap, can be picked by ISRO satellites or any other aircraft flying over the crash site, as the equipment is activated automatically on heavy impact, they said.
But as no signal was picked up by the satellites or the search operation aircraft, the sources said, the DGCA would also look into why the ELT did not get activated.
The Dauphin, Bell 206 L4, Bell 407 and MI-172 helicopters in service in the North-East by the PHHL were maintained according to the stipulated guidelines of the manufacturers and approved by the DGCA, they said.
Unable to state from when the services would resume in the area, the sources said they were confident of restarting the chopper operations after the company's entire fleet was carefully examined and declared airworthy.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.