Lost,Found,Lost

YSR is survived by wife Vijayalakshmi,son and MP Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy and daughter Sharmila.

Also dead in the crash were the CM’s Principal Secretary P Subramanium,Chief Security Officer A S C John Wesley,pilot Group Captain S K Bhatia and co-pilot M S Reddy.

Rosaiah and Chief Secretary P Ramakanth Reddy told reporters it appeared that the helicopter exploded after slamming into a hillock. “That also explains the charred bodies and disintegration of the craft. At first,three bodies were spotted. It took some time to locate the other two bodies in the trees and bushes,” Reddy said.

The body of YSR was found with the seat belt still around him. He was identified by his while dhoti and shirt. Flown to Hyderabad,his body will be kept at the Lal Bahadur Shastri stadium tomorrow for people to pay their last respects before being taken to his hometown Pulivendla in Kadapa for the funeral.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi will be going to Hyderabad. The Union Cabinet,which met in Delhi and condoled his death,decided to accord him a state funeral.

While no stone was left unturned to locate YSR’s chopper,it was finally through triangulation of mobile phone coordinates that an area was marked out where IAF choppers carried out sorties from daybreak this morning to finally trace its remains.

The emergency location transponder was not working and,sources said,this will be an important part of the investigation to be carried out by a four-member team headed by Pawan Hans CMD R K Tyagi — the other three members from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation are Irshad Ahmed,Sanjay Bramhane and Maneesh Kumar.

Significantly,the Bell 430 only has a cockpit voice recorder and not a flight data recorder as it was not made mandatory at the time this chopper was bought.

As reported by The Indian Express,two mobile phones of persons on the chopper did ring on Wednesday while attempts were being made to reach them after the helicopter went missing. With the help of the operators whose towers were picking up the signal — one was of the BSNL in Palunapadu and the other of Airtel in nearby Iskala — authorities were able to triangulate the specific area where the mobile was located. This is how coordinates were given to the IAF which then started the search and found the wreckage at 8.42 am.

Initial findings suggest that the chopper that last reported flying at 5,500 feet descended to a lower flight level to possibly avoid fast-developing cumulonimbus clouds in the area. This is an instinctive practice among chopper pilots to come lower to keep the ground in sight and then deviate in a way to skirt the clouds.

The apprehension is that the hillock in Rudrakunduru,the site of the crash,was covered by this thick cloud cover,making it difficult for the pilot to spot. As a result,the chopper may have just crashed into the hillock which is said to be around 3,100 feet. The deviation from the flight path seems to be between 7-10 km,said sources.

Now,this chopper was fitted with a Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS) which is meant to alert the pilot about such obstacles. It is quite possible that this may have faltered,which only makes the case for making it mandatory for all choppers to have the latest Enhanced GPWS version.

The helicopter had all instruments needed for instrument-guided flying — this allows the pilot to guide the chopper only with the aid of instruments as in fixed-wing flights despite low visibility. But the tendency,sources said,is to not use this method while flying to a location where there is no instrument landing system.

By all accounts,initial impressions among investigators is that the pilot may have suffered from “spatial disorientation”. This is not new,but three cases which come close to what may have happened with YSR’s chopper are:

• In May 2001 when former Lok Sabha Speaker GMC Balayogi was killed in a chopper crash,investigations showed that the helicopter developed a technical snag and the pilot tried to bring it down but was hampered by poor visibility. This led to spatial disorientation and he misjudged a marshy land next to a pond and chose to land there. On reaching closer,he possibly realised the error and sought to climb again but went on to hit a tree.

• In September 2004,Meghalaya Rural Development Minister Cyprian Sangma was killed in a crash along with two MLAs. On their way to Shillong from Guwahati,the pilot spotted the Shillong helipad but could not land due to poor weather and turned back. In doing so,he ran into thick clouds which had formed by then,lowered the height,got spatially disoriented and hit a hill.

•In May 2001,Arunachal Pradesh Education Minister Dera Natung was killed when his chopper ran into bad weather. It later turned out that the pilot was attempting to fly between two hills but was disoriented by thick clouds and crashed.

Meanwhile,officials confirmed that the Sukhoi-30 scan images of the area did not yield much results despite the night-long effort.