Five Indian Air Force personnel, including two officers, were killed Saturday when an Antonov AN-32 transport aircraft crashed during landing at Jorhat in Assam.
Of the six personnel on board, one was rescued and his condition was said to be serious.
The IAF identified the five dead personnel as Sqn Ldr Prashant Singh, Flt Lt Shubham Kumar, Sgt Jitendra Sharma, Agniveervayu Khemaram Kumawat and Agniveervayu Danish Alam. A Court of Inquiry (CoI) is being constituted to ascertain the cause of the accident.
In a post on X, the IAF said it deeply regrets the loss of five personnel who made the supreme sacrifice in the line of duty.
“IAF extends its deepest condolences to the bereaved families and stands firmly with them in this hour of grief,” it said.
According to sources, the aircraft took off around 10 am on a sortie from Jorhat to Chabua. The crew, it is learnt, sought a landing soon after takeoff. Upon landing, it veered off the runway, crossed the parallel taxiway, and broke into pieces before catching fire. Rescue efforts with fire tenders and ambulances were launched immediately.
Sources indicated that the aircraft belonged to the IAF’s 43 Squadron and had undergone an overhaul and upgrade in recent years as part of the modernisation programme for AN-32s.
In a separate post on X earlier, the IAF said that the accident took place during a routine sortie in Jorhat. “Crash site management and initial enquiries are on at this time,” it said.
This is the third major crash of an AN-32 in the last 10 years. Bought in 1984 from the erstwhile Soviet Union, the AN-32 is a critical workhorse of the IAF. At least two of these aircraft have crashed since 2016, killing 42 IAF personnel.
On July 22, 2016, an AN-32 went missing over the Bay of Bengal, flying from Tambaram Air Force Station, Chennai, to Port Blair. There were 29 people on board.
On June 3, 2019, an AN-32 crashed in hilly terrain when it was heading to Mechuka in West Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh, near the border with China, killing 13 on board.
The AN-32 is a twin-engine turboprop aircraft, and the IAF has employed it as a tactical transport aircraft since its induction into the force.
The aircraft can carry a maximum weight of 27 tons at a maximum speed of 530 km/h. It can carry up to 6.7 tons of cargo or 50 passengers, making it the preferred choice for transport of men and cargo across different terrain.
It can cover small to medium ranges and can operate from far-flung airfields with minimum ground infrastructure, thus enabling it to play critical roles during a conflict, especially in the mobilisation of men and material and with its limited bombing role. The aircraft is also used for paradropping operations.
During the Kargil conflict with Pakistan in 1999 and in Operation Parakram in 2001-02, the aircraft played a critical role in transporting personnel and cargo to border areas through multiple sorties.
After an AN-32 crashed in 2009, India signed a USD 400-million contract with Ukrainian manufacturer Antonov to upgrade most of the IAF’s 105 AN-32s through the overhaul of their airframes and turboprop engines. The programme also involved fitting the platforms with advanced avionics, navigation and communication equipment.
But the programme got stalled after Russia formally annexed the Crimea region in 2014. Subsequently, India and Ukraine agreed to resume the upgrades, with Kyiv having developed some alternatives to the Russian-made systems on the aircraft.
The upgrade had been underway at the IAF’s base repair depot (BRD) in Kanpur, with equipment transferred from Ukraine. Half of the aircraft have been modernised in Ukraine and around 38 aircraft were upgraded at the BRD.
The IAF has been looking to buy new aircraft under the Medium Transport Aircraft (MTA) programme to replace the ageing AN-32 and the Ilyushin Il-76 fleets. In March this year, the Ministry of Defence said the induction of the MTA will meet the strategic, tactical and operational airlift requirements of the Services.
An IAF plane has crashed in Assam's Jorhat (Image:X@Brics_Timesx). 
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