According to military officials, the Army’s Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) pilots made a “mayday” call to air traffic control moments before the helicopter crashed near Tuting in Arunachal Pradesh, signalling a fault with the aircraft’s mechanicals.
Five soldiers were killed on Friday at 10:43 a.m. when a locally made twin-engine weapon system integrated (WSI) helicopter crashed in Migging village in the border state’s Upper Siang district.
A “mayday call” is a distress signal sent by pilots to air traffic control via radio in an emergency.
An official said, “Before the crash, the Air Traffic Control (ATC) had received a mayday call suggesting a technical or mechanical failure. This will form the focus of the Court of Inquiry (CoI).”
A CoI was mandated to look into the accident’s causes by the Army headquarters.
According to the officials, the two pilots have more than 1,800 hours of combined flying experience, and on Friday the weather in the Tuting region was conducive to flight operations.
“It is reported that the weather was good for flying operations. The pilots had more than 600 combined flying hours on ALH (weapon system integrated version) and over 1,800 service flying hours between them,” the official said.
The helicopter was inducted into the service in June 2015.
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