NIOT’s remote vehicle to join search for missing IAF plane

Chennai, Sep 1 (PTI) A remotely operated vehicle of NIOTthat can scan sea at a depth of 3500 metres, will join thesearch for IAF’s AN-32 aircraft which went missing with 29crew members on July 22, a Coast Guard official said today. The search operations would move into the third phase nextweek and the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) hadbeen requested to bring its remotely operated vehicle that canbe taken to a depth of 3,500 metres, Coast Guard Commander(East) Inspector General Rajan Bargotra said here. So far two phases — surface search and sub-surface –have been undertaken, but no debris of the transport aircraftthat went missing on its way to Port Blair from Tambaramairbase here has been found, he told reporters here on thesidelines of Regional Editors Conference, organised by thePress Information Bureau. "As of now we are into second phase of search operations.Surface search, we have already done that for quite sometime.No debris has been located. Now the focus is on sub-surfacesearch," he said. Bargotra said at present two vessels — "Samudra Ratnakar"from the Geological Survey of India and "Sagar Nidhi" of NIOT,were deployed in the sub-surface search. Noting that the search operations began with 13 ships ofCoast Guard and Navy, besides IAF aircraft, he said when itwas certain that there was no debris visible on the surface,the search was "tapered" down to sub-surface search. "Initially, we almost started with 13 ships and 11 planesand after doing that for about a month or so, when it wascertain that there was no debris which was visible on thesurface and it was not likely to be there, then we have slowlytapered down the search," he said. PTI VIJ VSSC