The fate of two Indian Army pilots in a Rudra helicopter that crashed into the Ranjit Sagar Dam lake near Pathankot on Tuesday (August 3) remains unknown, even as search and rescue crews recovered the wreckage of the chopper and some pilot gear, officials said.
Among the items recovered by search parties were chopper skids, fuel tanks, stabilizer, helmets, and the identification card of one of the two pilots, one of the officials mentioned above said.
A second official said that the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) built Rudra helicopter was doing a training exercise that involved flying low over the lake.
Being an army helicopter, the Rudra lacks emergency flotation gear (EFG), and the crew is unlikely to have life preservers, according to commander KP Sanjeev Kumar (retd), a military aviation expert and former experimental test pilot.
‘If the helicopter is operating within gliding distance of shore/land, life preservers, EFG and life raft are not mandated. Occasionally, such helicopters may be required to operate over water. That’s ‘risk exposure’,’ he said.
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