Indian Navy’s Dornier Surveillance Aircraft Crashes Into Sea

The Indian Navy’s Dornier Surveillance aircraft has crashed into sea on Tuesday night during a routine training sortie about 20 nautical miles South West of Goa.

The Naval Air Station at Goa lost radar contact with the aircraft at 10:08 PM. The aircraft is feared to have got rid soon thereafter, PIB reported on Wednesday.

This is the first ever accident involving a Dornier wherein the “aircraft has been lost”. Acquired in late 1990s from the state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), 36 Dornier aircraft are operated by the Navy. The Navy has constituted a fact-finding committee to ascertain the cause of the incident.

While three officers (two Pilots and one woman Observer) were in aircrew onboard the aircraft, one have been reported to have survived. 

It is the latest in a series of disasters to hit the Navy, and comes just months after a torpedo recovery vessel sank off Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, leaving five dead.