Navy offshore patrol vessel could be involved to locate Coastguard crew

C Shivakumar

Chennai:

While efforts are on to locate the missing Dornier aircraft and crew
of Coastguard, Indian Navy has not ruled out the possibility of using
offshore patrol vessels to locate the missing crew of Indian Coast
Guard’s Dornier aircraft.



While Inspector General SP Sharma, Commander, Coast Guard (East), said
that Southern Air Command has offered its help, the Indian Navy has
not ruled out using offshore patrol vessel to locate the aircraft.



Meanwhile, this is the second such incident involving a Dornier in the
last 75 days and it is likely an enquiry could be ordered by Flag
Officer Naval Aviation. “It is also likely that the Dorniers could
undergo a one-time check,” said an official. This could also mean that
the Dorniers could also be temporarily grounded till a detailed
inspection is being undertaken.



However, Indian Navy officials have ruled out temporary grounding of
Dorniers for conducting one-time check but they did not rule out an
enquiry into the incident.



Interestingly, the first incident of Dornier, Do-228, belonging to the
Indian Navy Aviation Squadron 310, crashed off Goa Coast while on a
training mission. Surprisingly, Commander Joshi, the in-charge of the
aircraft, has 4,000 hours of flying experience.



Coast Guard said that the crew of CG-791 was too experienced and it
has not given up hope on finding the missing crew. However, the search
and rescue operation during the day had not yielded any results.



While, Coast Guard has said that Dorniers are the safest aircraft to
fly an audit report in 2010-11 has questioned the role-worthiness of
some 11 aircraft that was procured by the Indian Navy between March
2006 and November 2008.



Interestingly, the Dorniers were bought to replenish Islanders
aircraft. It is learnt that in 2005, the Maritime Capability
Perspective Plan recommended that future Medium Range reconnaissance
inductions would be those having greater endurance and range. However,
the aircraft lacked critical role capabilities and did not have weapon
capacity.



The incident involving CG-791 is also the first in the 22-year history
of Coast guard, said Inspector General SP Sharma, Commander, Coast
Guard (East)