The debris of the Pawan Hans helicopter that crashed off the coast of Mumbai on Wednesday has been found. A massive search operation is on to locate the two missing pilots.
Members of the search operation have recovered a portion of the door of the chopper which crashed around two nautical miles away from the SLQ Oil rig.
The 14-seater Pawan Hans Dauphin AS 365-N3 had two pilots on board on a night landing training mission. The cause of the crash is yet to be determined.
Two Indian Coast Guard ships have been diverted to the area, and a helicopter carrying ship was also dispatched from Porbandar port. Two Dornier choppers from Daman and Porbander were launched earlier on Thursday.
The chopper crashed at around 7:30 pm on Wednesday while carrying out night landing practice at Bombay High, a mid-sea oil rig run by Oil and Natural Gas Corporation of India (ONGC). ONGC hires Pawan Hans helicopters to ferry its officials from Mumbai to its offshore oilfield.
The 14-seater VTPWF Dauphin aircraft of 2001-make took off from the ONGC installation at 7:12 PM and contact with it was lost eight minutes later, a top official of the state-run Pawan Hans said.
In August this year, a Pawan Hans helicopter had crashed in Arunachal Pradesh. Three people including the two pilots died in that accident.
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