Search radius for Dornier aircraft widened

Chennai: The Coast Guard on Wednesday expanded the search area for locating the Dornier aircraft which has been missing off the coast of TN since Monday evening. Two ships fitted with SONAR have also been inducted to detect possible underwater debris of the aircraft in Bay of Bengal.

The search party, which had concentrated on the stretch between Cuddalore and Karaikal, has now widened the radius, expanding it upto 70 nautical miles into the sea, extending from Mahabalipuram to Karaikal on the Tamil Nadu coast.

Speaking to DC, a coast guard official said the water levels in Bay of Bengal are much deeper than in the Arabian Sea. As a result, it was decided to press into operation two ships from Vishakapatnam to aid in scouring vast stretches of the ocean bed.

“In the event of a possible crash, the debris might have settled well into a deeper sea location. These two ships on the ocean surface will pick up signals emitted,” the official said. Reacting to media reports of a local fisherman in Cuddalore district witnessing ‘burning objects fall into the sea’, the official said the missing aircraft has not been sighted so far. The search operation, lasting more than forty-eight hours, involves 15 ships and two aircraft besides several patrol boats.

The search is being coordinated by various agencies like Coast Guard, Navy as well as personnel from the state coastal security group. Earlier in the day, director general of Coast Guard, Vice Admiral HCS Bisht, reviewed the search operation at a meeting in Chennai. He later met with family members of the missing crew.

In a press release, the Coast Guard indicated that an advisory has been issued to fishermen and merchant ships to report on any sighting of the missing aircraft. The Dornier aircraft CG-791, which took off from Chennai at 5.30 pm on Monday for a routine surveillance sortie, had deputy commandment Vidyasagar (pilot), Commandment MK Soni (co-pilot) and Deputy Commandment Subhash Suresh (navigator) on board