Bodies of trainee, instructor found in Jharkhand dam, search continues for missing aircraft

The bodies of the trainee pilot and his instructor, who were on board the two-seater aircraft that went missing after taking off from Jharkhand's Jamshedpur, were found in the Chandil dam on Thursday, officials said.

The trainer aircraft, a Cessna 152 belonging to a private aviation company, however, could not be traced during the day and the search operation will continue on Friday.

While the body of trainee pilot Shubhrodeep Dutta, a resident of Adityapur near Jamshedpur, was found in the morning, that of pilot-in-command Captain Jeet Satru Anand who hailed from Patna was located later.

The aircraft went missing after taking off from the Sonari aerodrome on Tuesday, following which a search operation was launched in the nearby areas, including the reservoir of the dam.

Villagers had claimed that an aircraft crashed into the water body on Tuesday. "Post-mortem examination of both the bodies will be conducted at Mahatma Gandhi Medical College and Hospital, Jamshedpur," an official said.

A 19-member team of the Indian Navy came from Visakhapatnam following a request of the Seraikela-Kharswan district administration to conduct the search operation. "The search operation was called off for the day at 6 pm due to inclement weather. It will be resumed tomorrow as the aircraft could not be traced," Chandil sub-divisional officer Subhra Rani told PTI.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has started an investigation along with the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), Directorate of Flying Training (DFT) and Directorate of Airworthiness (DAW) into the incident, they said.

Alchemist Aviation, which owned and operated the aircraft registered as VT-TAJ, in a statement said it was too early to comment about the reasons for the crash. "The aircraft had 80 litres of fuel in it with an endurance of 4 hours 30 minutes, and the flying time was scheduled to be one hour," it said.

The plane lost contact with the Jamshedpur air traffic control tower (ATC) around 11.10 am on Tuesday. The aircraft was in an airworthy condition with an airworthiness certificate issued by DGCA and was fitted with an engine manufactured by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM), according to the statement.

"The make and model of the engine manufacturer is Lycoming Engines, Oliver St, Williamsport, PA 17701, USA. The aircraft has a life span of 30,000 hours out of which it has completed only 16,000 hours. It is pertinent to mention here that we directly purchase engines only from Lycoming Engines, USA," it said.

A pair of shoes was found floating in the dam water that was subsequently recovered and identified, it added.

Initially, the search operation was conducted along with local authorities and then with the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), the company said. The Indian Navy was then called for help and it deployed a Sonic Navigation and Ranging (SONAR) device, which would assist in identifying the exact position of the incident, it said.

"In this hour of distress, we stand by the family of our dear pilots who were involved in this incident. We mourn the loss of the pilots, which has been the biggest loss for us yet," the statement read.