ICG advanced light helicopters ‘Dhruv’. File
| Photo Credit: The Hindu
Hindustan Aeronautics Limited has advised civilian operators to ground the indigenous Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) Mark-III (Dhruv) until the cause of the last week’s Porbandar crash is identified.
The armed forces have already temporarily grounded all their 330 ALHs following the January 5 crash of the Indian Coast Guard’s ALH Mark-III during a training sortie that killed all three crew members onboard. The crew included Commandant Saurabh, Deputy Commandant S.K. Yadav and Pradhan Navik Manoj.
HAL has informed its operators that the helicopter involved in the accident didn’t respond to pilot control inputs in the final 3-4 seconds, according to a helicopter industry source. A HAL spokesperson neither confirmed nor declined the advisory. The Border Security Force has six of these choppers in its fleet, and the Jharkhand government also has at least one Dhruv helicopter. HAL also handed one ALH to the government of Mauritius in February 2023 to be used by Mauritian Police Force.
The Coast Guard has constituted a Board of Inquiry into the accident, which is the third crash in the past two years involving the ALH. In September, an ALH Mark-III crashed during a medical evacuation off the Porbandar coast killing all three onboard. In March 2023,an ALH of the Coast Guard crashed shortly after takeoff in Kochi. There were no fatalities in this mishap.
“There have been nearly 20 crashes involving the ALH over the past 24 years. While some of these have been due to operational reasons because of the extreme conditions the chopper flies in such as high altitude and low visibility conditions at night, there have also been concerns over control rods, which were found to be broken. Subsequently, the rods were changed with an upgraded material. The enquiry spearheaded by ICG will reveal whether the cause of the crash was due to operational circumstances or a manufacturing flaw,” Wing Commander Unni Pillai (Retd), former chief test pilot at HAL, told The Hindu.
Published – January 11, 2025 09:32 pm IST