IAF helicopter crash: Flight data recorder recovered to ascertain cause of accident

Chennai: The flight data recorder of the ill-fated IAF Mi-17V5 chopper that crashed in Tamil Nadu and claimed the death of 13 including Chief of Defence Staff Bipin Rawat and his wife, was recovered on Thursday morning.

As per reports, a 25 special team of the Air force officers led by Wing Commander R. Bhardwaj has recovered the black box and more details are awaited.

Also known as black box, this vital electronic device, records 88 vital parameters about a flight including, airspeed, altitude, cockpit conversations, and air pressure among others. When a crash happens, the black box is located on a priority basis to understand what actually caused the crash.

As the priority on Wednesday was to recover the bodies safely to Wellington Army hospital, the special team of air force officers were engaged in recovering the black box since Thursday morning.

Further forensic examination of the remains of the chopper can also reveal if there were external causes for the accident.

In addition, Group Captain Varun Singh, the Directing Staff at the Defence Services Staff College in Wellington, Tamil Nadu, and the lone survivor of the ill-fated chopper, can also provide first hand information on the flight.

A six-member special medical team from Coimbatore is attending his treatment who is struggling for his life at the Wellington Army hospital.

Sources at Wellington said that Varun Singh, who is a Shaurya Chakra awardee, suffered 60 per cent burns during the copter crash.

Ravikumar, who was the first person to reach the accident spot, had told IANS that except for two people the bodies of all the other soldiers were burnt.

On Wednesday, the IAF helicopter with 14 persons on board, including General Rawat and his wife, took off from Sulur air base and crashed minutes before it was supposed to land at Coonoor.