Wreckage of IAF's AN-32 aircraft traced seven-and-half years after it went missing

New Delhi: The wreckage of a transport aircraft of the IAF that went missing nearly seven-and-half years ago with 29 personnel on board has possibly been found at a depth of around 3,400 metres in the Bay of Bengal off the Chennai coast, the defence ministry said Friday.

It said the scrutiny of images captured by an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) deployed by the National Institute of Ocean Technology recently found to be conforming with an AN-32 aircraft.

"The search images were scrutinised and found to be conforming with an AN-32 aircraft. This discovery at the probable crash site, with no other recorded history of any other missing aircraft report in the same area, points to the debris as possibly belonging to the crashed IAF An-32," it said.

The debris was traced 310 km off the Chennai coast.

The AN-32 aircraft with registration number K-2743 had gone missing over the Bay of Bengal on July 22, 2016. It was on its way to Port Blair from Chennai. Large-scale search and rescue operations by aircraft and ships could not locate any missing personnel or aircraft debris since the plane went missing.

"The National Institute of Ocean Technology, which functions under the aegis of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, had recently deployed an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) with deep sea exploration capability at the last known location of the missing AN-32," the defence ministry said in a statement.

This search was conducted at a depth of 3,400 metres using multiple payloads, including a multi-beam SONAR, synthetic aperture SONAR and high-resolution photography, it said.

"Analysis of search images had indicated the presence of debris of a crashed aircraft on the sea bed approximately 140 nautical miles (approximately 310 km) from the Chennai coast," it said.

Besides the six crew members, the people on board the aircraft included 12 IAF personnel, one each from the Army, Navy and the Coast Guard and eight civilians.

Sources in the defence and military establishment said efforts will now be focused on bringing closure to the families of people who were on board the aircraft. They said all possible ways will be explored to retrieve the wreckage and take remedial measures so that such an incident does not recur.

"We want to bring closure to the families," said a source.

A large number of assets of the Indian Air Force as well as of the Indian Navy were deployed to trace the AN-32 aircraft after it went missing. The Antonov-32 is a Soviet-origin turboprop twin-engined military transport aircraft.